The Linux Lab's hosts have been fully updated to new Shuttle PCs, for remote access please use these stellar hostnames: altair, ankaa, antares, arcturus, avior, bellatrix, betelgeuse, canopus, capella, deneb, dubhe, hadar, mimosa, naos, polaris, procyon, rastaban, saiph, sirius, ursa.

The CS Labs staff maintain dropbox services for instructors and students in the computer science department. To access them from a machine inside the lab:

The dropbox server is 

dropbox.cs.uchicago.edu
as of January 1, 2012.

The individual course directories are located at the 

Courses/Winter 2012
path.

Each dropbox has two accounts, one for the students to submit work, and another for TAs to retrieve work. Please ask a tutor if you have any questions regarding specific accounts (e.g., forgotten password) or dropboxes, as this information will not be documented below.

 

Connecting from Mac OS X:

  1. In Finder, open the "Go" menu, and select the "Connect to Server..." item.
  2. Enter the server address as 
    dropbox.cs.uchicago.edu
    and click Connect.
    connect to the server
  3. In the window that appears, select "Guest" and click "Connect".
  4. In the window that appears, select "Courses" and click "OK".
    mount server
  5. Navigate, using Finder, to the "Winter 2012" quarter directory, and then to your courses' directory.
  6. Copy your files into the dropbox directory via dragging and dropping.

 

If you are resubmitting an assignment, change the name of your submission to reflect that fact.

Connecting from Windows:

WinSCP is the recommended SCP/SFTP client on Windows. Use the client with which you are most comfortable.

Once WinSCP is properly set up, follow step 1 when connecting from Linux/Unix.

The dropbox server is configured so that your working directory should be set to the dropbox directory itself upon login, but if this fails you must manually navigate to the path "/Users/Courses/".

Connecting from Linux/Unix:

lftp is the recommended (text-based) SFTP client for linux machines. These instructions are written with lftp in mind, though any SCP or SFTP client will correctly access the dropbox server. Use the client with which you are most comfortable.

The dropbox server is configured so that your working directory should be set to the dropbox directory itself upon login, but if this fails you must manually navigate to the path "/Users/Courses/".

  1. Execute the command "sftp submit@dropbox.cs.uchicago.edu". Enter the password given to you by your TA or professor. Remember that the 'sftp' command starts the transfer service and that the 'submit@dropbox.cs.uchicago.edu' provides the address to connect to, so there must be a space between the two pieces of information.
  2. Type "cd Winter\ 2012" to navigate to the quarters' folder, and then type "ls" to get a list of the courses offered. Note that there is a space between 'Winter\' and '2012'.
  3. Navigate using the "cd" and "ls" commands such that you are within your courses' dropbox directory, as shown in step 2.
  4. Use the command "put ~/path/to/local/file" where ~/path/to/local/file is replaced with the path to the file on your machine that you would like to submit.
  5. Your TAs will be able to retrieve files placed in the dropbox directory, even while you will not be able to see the results. For more information about sftp, use the command "man sftp" at your terminal prompt, or do a web search.

Note that students do not have SSH access to the server. You will only be able to transfer files.

Have questions or suggestions about dropboxes? Let us know.