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HOWTO Documents > How to log in and out of CCIS Unix workstations

Audience and Purpose

This document is intended for new users of CCIS Solaris systems, including the Sun workstations in room 102WVH, "denali" (also known as "login"), the College's large time-sharing machine, and various other Unix machines throughout the College. It does not address the handful of Linux machines in room 102, which are in beta testing.

This document simply tells you how to log in, get a shell prompt you can type commands at, and log out. It does not attempt to tell you how to use your account once you're logged in. There are other documents that provide some information about that. In addition, you may want to purchase a book, such as Learning the Unix Operating System, published by O'Reilly.

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Logging In on the Console

If you're physically sitting at a Unix machine and using its screen, keyboard, and mouse, you're said to be at the console - i.e., you're not connected remotely over a network or a phone line. If you're sitting at the console of a CCIS Unix machine, you'll be using a graphical, mouse-based windowing system called the X Window System (or just X; you may also hear it referred to as X11).

When you sit down at the console of a machine running X, you should see a blue login window with "login:" and "Password:" labels in the middle of the screen. (There will be a smaller blue window in the upper-left corner - that's for displaying error messages - and a larger blue window in the lower-right corner with information about the particular machine you're sitting at, and possibly system wide announcements.)

If the screen is blank, most likely the screen-saver has kicked in to blank the screen, and you can get the display back by pressing one of the Shift keys on the keyboard (or any other key, but the Shift keys are good because they don't enter characters by themselves). Otherwise, if you don't see the blue screen, it probably means somebody else is logged into the machine (or perhaps that there's something wrong with it); find another machine to log into.

At the "login:" prompt, type your CCIS account name. (This is the login name you chose when you created your account; it's also the part of your email address before the at sign.) Then press Return (or Enter). Then at the "Password:" prompt, type your password. For security, your password will not appear as you type it. When you press Return (or Enter) again, the screen should clear and you will be logged into the system.

Getting a Terminal Window

When you first log in on the console, a few small windows may appear on the screen, but you probably won't have a terminal window you can type commands in. To get one, press and hold down the middle mouse button, with the mouse pointer over the dark screen background (not over a window). This will pop up a "LOGINS" menu. Choose "Local Host", the first entry on that menu, and a terminal window will appear. (You may have to click the left mouse button to position the window before it appears.) You'll need to move the mouse pointer inside the new terminal window before you can type commands in it.

Note that just closing or quitting from the terminal window does not log you completely out when you're using X; see below.

Logging Out on the Console

When you're done working on the console, you need to log out so that other people can use the machine (and so your files and mail are secure. To do that, move the mouse pointer over the dark background (i.e. not over a window) and press and hold the left mouse button. Then choose "LOGOUT OF X WINDOWS" at the bottom of the window that pops up.

(If you've changed your window manager - which you probably haven't, so don't worry about it - the menu entry you need may say something like "Exit FVWM" or "Quit" instead.)

When you do that, the screen will clear and then the blue login window should appear again. You should wait and make sure the login screen appears - you're not completely logged out until it does. If it takes a long time, there might be something wrong with the machine, and you should ask a lab proctor for help or send an eMail to systems@ccs.neu.edu.

Logging In Remotely

If you're not physically sitting at a CCIS Unix machine, you're logging in remotely, connecting to the machine through CCIS's network or the Internet or with a modem, via a dialup (telephone) connection.

If you're dialing in to CCIS to connect, you should read our Dialup Information in Nomad Network Documentation.

It's beyond the scope of this clue sheet to describe all the possible details of connecting to a CCIS computer, but we will mention some of the software you might use: If you're using a dial-up connection, you might use a terminal emulator such as Kermit or Procomm, or you might use something called PPP to get an Internet connection over the phone line. If you have an Internet connection (either using PPP or a direct network wire), you'll be using ssh, as described on our Welcome page at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/welcome/.

When you connect to a CCIS Unix machine (either by running a command such as "ssh denali" or by running a terminal emulator, dialing in to the CCIS network, and issuing the command to connect to a CCIS machine as described in the Nomad Documentation Dialup Information), you'll get a prompt that says "login:". Type your CCIS account name. (This is the login name you chose when you created your account; it's also the part of your email address before the at sign.) Then press Return (or Enter).

You should then get a "Password:" prompt. Type your password, which should not appear as you enter it, and press Return (or Enter).

If you typed your login name and password correctly, you should now get a shell prompt you can type commands at. (The prompt is called a "shell prompt" because the program that interprets your commands is called a "shell" or "command shell".)

Logging Out Remotely

When you're done, you can simply type "logout" and press Return (or Enter) to to log out and end your session. (If for some reason that doesn't work - in particular, if you get the message "Not a login shell." - type "exit" instead. That can happen when you connect in an unusual way.)

Depending on how you originally connected, this may automatically disconnect you, or you may need to tell your communication software to hang up the phone or to quit.

Getting Help

If you have any specific questions or problems, please send an eMail to systems@ccs.neu.edu. If you can't send mail (e.g. because you can't log in), you can stop by the Systems office in room 310WVH.