Unix Research

ITS supports the UNIX research servers and the applications that are available on the servers.

Research Servers

There are currently 3 research servers:

• research1.cob.ohio-state.edu
• research2.cob.ohio-state.edu
• research3.cob.ohio-state.edu

Connecting to Research Servers - Secure Shell (SSH) Client

A Secure Shell (SSH) client is required to login to the Unix research servers. You can connect to the servers above using your Fisher username (lastname_#) and password.

Type passwd on the command line to change the password

For Windows 7, Vista and XP, a free site-licensed copy of Putty is available for all OSU faculty, staff, and students. It is available for download at the OSU Site Licensed Software site.

For Mac OS X, a free ssh client called Fugu is available which offers both SSH and SFTP.

When connecting to a server for the first time, you will be prompted to accept the server's host key. This is a unique identifier that should be accepted and stored. When connecting to the server again, your SSH client will check to make sure the host key matches. If it does not, you will be alerted as such, you should not continue connecting to the server, and contact the Helpdesk for assistance.

Applications available

The Unix research servers have the following applications available for general use:

• SAS v9.1.3 (only available on research1)
• Matlab 2007a (only available on research2 and research3)
• GNU Octave v2.1.73 (only available on research2 and research3)
• R v2.5.0 (only available on research2 and research3)
• Gnu Complier Collection (GCC) v4.1 compilers (gfortran, gcc, g++) (only available on research2 and research3)
• AMD Core Math Library (optimized LAPACK,BLAS, and FFT) (only available on research2 and research3)
• GNU Scientific Library

File Transfer

Traditional FTP is not available on the Unix research servers. FTP, like traditional telnet, is too insecure because it sends usernames/passwords in clear-text. Instead, use Secure FTP (SFTP) to transfer files. SFTP should be part of your SSH client. Use the same server name, username, and password to login with SFTP as you do with SSH.

UNIX Tutorials

There are many tutorials, guides, and command references for Unix freely available on the web. For starters, try these sites:

• Unix help for users
• Unix and Linux commands, information, and help

Whenever in doubt about how to use a Unix command, try the manual pages by typing "man [command name]" (without the quotes).

Two popular editors are available to edit text files directly on the Unix research servers: vi and emacs.