Lynchburg College maintains over 17 computer labs on campus. All lab computers carry the most commonly used software such as Microsoft Word. Many labs may also carry special purpose software. Computers in these labs and in all campus offices and classrooms are connected to the College's LAN (Local Area Network). All residence halls are also connected to the LAN. The campus LAN is connected to the Internet. In addition to computers that students may have in their living areas all students have access to a student server computer. Questions regarding the operation of College computing facilities should be directed to Help@lynchburg.edu.
- Username and Password
The address of the machine that contains your server account is either erin.lynchburg.edu or cain.lynchburg.edu. In order to determine which server your account is on do the following:
- At the Windows desktop click on Programs and then on MS-DOS. This will open an MS-DOS window.
- At the DOS prompt (C:\>) type ping YourUserName.web.lynchburg.edu
where YourUserName is your server username (see below).
The first line of the response will indicate whether your server is erin or cain.
Your username is normally your last name followed by an underscore followed by the first initial of your first name; for ex. smith_j. There are some exceptions to this rule so check your ID card for your official username. Your password is set by you and may be changed by connecting to http://login.Lynchburg.edu. NOTE: Your initial password is your date of birth in the form YYYYMMDD. You should change your initial password at your first opportunity for security reasons.
- Your password should meet the following criteria.
- It should be at least 7 characters long.
- It should be something you can remember so you do not have to write it down.
- It should not be anything obvious.
- It should not be a word in the dictionary.
- Connecting to Your Server Account
All of the work you do for this course should be done in your server account. Here is how you may access your account from your dorm or any campus PC.
- At the desktop Click on Start and log out guest (or whomever else is logged in to the PC at which you are seated).
- Next, log in as yourself using your username and password as described above. This should automatically make your P: drive the root directory of your server account.
Your course work should be placed in your CS-115 subdirectory (see below).
- Directories and subdirectories
Your server account is a directory with several subdirectories. When you connect to your server account you will find yourself in your main directory which bears the same name as your accout (i.e., normally LastName_FirstInitial). In this directory you should find several subdirectories.
- Server Account Directories
- Private - This files in this directory may only be accessed by you.
- Public - The files in this directory may be accessed via a web browser or through the campus LAN by onyone. Only put files that you wish to be public in this directory. This directory may also be used to hold you website pages.
- Class Subdirectories - These directories are intended to hold your completed assignments for courses you are taken. The directory name indicates the year and term that you took the course and the course ID. For example, the directory name for the CS course "Using the Internet", CS-115, is LC993_CS115A. All files in this directory may be viewed by only you and the instructor. You MUST place assignments to be graded in this directory.
- Local, Special, Common and Scripts - These are special purpose directories that do not concern us at this time.
Important Note: Any files placed in your main server directory or in your Private directory cannot be viewed by the instructor. Therefore the instructor will not be able to grade assignments placed in these directories. You assigned work should be placed in the subdirectory for that class. If, for some reason, this is not possible then put the assignment in the Public directory.
You may create more subdirectories as you see fit. It is usually a good idea to create directories to better organize your work. For example, if you are taking an English composition course you may wish to create a directory in which to place your compositions. Additionally, your server account is a good place to back up important files.
- Privileges, Protection and Access.
Computers are potentially vulnerable to unauthorized access by unscrupulous individuals. Because of this computer operating system manufactuers build security systems into their operating systems. It is beyond the scope of this web page to delve very deeply into configuring your computer's security software. You cannot, in fact, modify the security settings for your server account. They are as explained above. Briefly, whatever files you want protected put into your Private subdirectory and whatever files you want public put into your Public directory.
All of my courses have web sites. To see a list of these courses connect your web browser to http://cs-netlab-01.lynchburg.edu/courses/
You may use either Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape as your web browser. Both are available throughout campus and are also available as a free download from Netscape or Microsoft's Internet sites.
A web browser is a program that enables the user to connect to computers on the Internet that contain information in a special format called HTML (HyperText Markup Language).
The computers that hold such information and wish to make it available via web browsers must run a special program called a web server.
The web browser is a client program and runs on the user's computer. It makes requests for information from the web server (a server program) that normally runs on the computer that holds the information on a hard disk drive.
Every computer on the Internet has a name called a host name. Most, but not all, host names begin with www which stands for World Wide Web.
Information stored in HTML format is stored in or accessed through units called web pages. In simple terms the World Wide Web is the collection of all the web pages and their hosting computers across the world that are connected via the Internet. Information acessed via web pages may be text, graphic images, music or other sounds or even video.
Every web page is identified by its URL (Universal Resouce Locator). An example of a URL is the following www.cybersite.com/images/picture.gif. A URL has several components. The first of these is the host name. This specifies the computer. In the example above www.cybersite.com is the host name. The host name itself has components. The rightmost component designates the highest level domain.
- Some common high-level domains in the U.S.
- com - a commercial enterprise (a business)
- edu - an educational institution
- gov - a governmental entity
- net - a network management entity
- org - a nonprofit organization
The next level specifies what is generally referred to as a domain name and denotes the particular business, educational institution, etc. All computers at that location have that domain name. For example, every computer at Lynchburg College contains lynchburg.edu in its name.
- Examples of domain names
- lynchburg.edu - Lynchburg College
- vt.edu - Virginia Tech Univ.
- Microsoft.com - Microsoft Inc.
Next we add the computer name to the domain name to specify the specific computer.
cs-netlab-01.lynchburg.edu refers to a computer called cs-netlab-01 located at Lynchburg College (lynchburg.edu). The computer name together with the domain name uniquely identifies the computer on the Internet and is called the host name.
Recall that the purpose of the URL is to identify a specific file, not just the computer on which it resides. In order to identify a file we must identify the directory in which it resides as well as the file's name.
So, cs-netlab-01.lynchburg.edu/courses/index.html refers to a file called index.html located in the courses directory of the computer cs-netlab-01 located at Lynchburg College. Note that / is used to separate directory and file names.
The URL specification is normally preceded by a protocol disignator that indicates how the web browser will access the file. The most common protocols are the following http, file and ftp. Http is the most common of these. It indicates that the file is to be retrieved using the standard web browser protocol. Such files may be html documents, text files, images or other types of multi-media files such as sound or video. The web browser may also access files on a local or network disk drive using the file protocol. Most browser have a built-in ftp client that is able to access/copy files using the ftp protocol.
I will be sending class notices, homework assignments, etc. to students via email. Email is also an excellent means for you to communicate with me. Consequently, students will be required to be proficient in the use of an acceptable email system. All students have a Lynchburg College email account at http://hornet.lynchburg.edu. Instructions on how to access your email via a web browser is given at http://www.lynchburg.edu/userguide/imailweb.htm. If you already have a different email account and would prefer to use it instead you will need to let me know the address of that account. You may contact me via email at roussos@lynchburg.edu
Learn About FTP
Using FTP in this class
Students in my Computer Science courses are required to submit their course work by copying the files containing the work to their server account into a directory where I can access it. This will typically be done as follows:
- First, complete your work on your PC at home or in a computer lab. Ordinarily this will involve creating one or more files.
- Run an FTP program (e.g. WS_FTP) and log into your ERIN or CAIN server account in order to copy the files to that account. (Instructions on the use of WS_FTP are located here)
- After logging in to the server via WS_FTP you will be in your own directory and you should see two windows containing files and directories. One window is a view of the current directory on your local PC and the other contains several directories from your server account. These will include PRIVATE, PUBLIC, MISC and LOCAL. Additionally there should be a directory bearing the name of this CS course; for ex. LC993_CS115A. Move into the class directory.
- Copy the files from your local PC to the server class directory. For WS_FTP you will highlight the desired files in the list that represents your local directory and then push the right arrow button to copy the files to the server directory. This is a good method to backup your work. I.e., keep one copy on your local PC and one in your server account in case one copy is accidentally destroyed.
We will review the FTP process in class. NOTE: The procedure for other FTP programs may be slightly different
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