Department Computing Resources

The Computer Science Department provides a set of Linux servers for student work. The systems hopper and turing are functionally equivalent and are cross linked so that logging into either system provides access to a student's files stored on either.

A third system, babbage, provides web services for students. This is also linked to hopper/turing and can be accessed from either once you are logged in by changing to the public_html directory found on your hopper/turing account.

Accessing Your Account

Command-Line Access

Use a ssh (secure-shell) client to log into hopper or turing. Linux and macOS systems have built-in command-line SSH clients. Modern versions of Windows (Windows 10 and above) also come with SSH, but it may need to be enabled (see instructions). Open a terminal and type:

ssh <YOUR_Z_ID>@hopper.cs.niu.edu

where your Z-ID is substituted for <YOUR_Z_ID. You will be prompted to enter your password.

PuTTY

PuTTY is an open-source SSH client for Windows. After installing PuTTY, and starting the application, you will be presented with a PuTTY Configuration dialog. In that configuration, you should set the Host Name field to hopper.cs.niu.edu or turing.cs.niu.edu. After opening the connection, you will be prompted for a username and password. Your username is your z-ID, and on our systems, that z-ID uses lowercase letters.

Activating Your Account

If you are new to our Linux systems, you must first create/activate your account. If this is the 1st time you are logging in, you should see an "access denied" message. There is no account yet but a script should be triggered to generate your user account. It is critical that you terminate or close your ssh client before attempting to login again. In the terminal, you can use the Ctrl+C keystroke to do so. Give the system a minute to generate the new account structure and repeat the login process. This time you should be able to log in.

Changing Your Password

Change your password once you are logged in. You can use the command passwd to do this. Begin by typing passwd at the command prompt. It will prompt you for the old password with something like:

Enter login(LDAP) password:

Enter the default password. If correct, the passwd command will display

New password:

Enter a new password. Make it at least 8 characters long, use some punctuation such as hypen, period, underscore, and also some numbers. Consider substituting a e in a word with the number 3, an i with the number 1, or an o with the number zero. Press Enter when you have entered the chosen password. If password is acceptable, the passwd command will prompt you to

Retype new password:

to to confirm it. If the word is too simple, the password system may reject it.

Troubleshooting

If you account is not created, it may be because:

• You are not enrolled in a Computer Science course
• You may have enrolled late, and the department has not yet received all records
• You may have already activated account, possibly in a previous semester

If a student forgets their password, they can email Emmalynn Hoyt at ehoyt1+linuxacct@niu.edu for a password reset.