The easiest way to gain access the Computer Science Dept. Linux machines outside of the Asprey computer lab. This gives you terminal access to the command line inside the department, and it allows you to send files back and forth to your home directory. Since it has no remote GUI, it is much faster than VNC.

The simplest way of doing this is first to connect to the VPN. Then, open a terminal on a Mac or Linux machine and type ssh username@mote.cs.vassar.edu, or use PuTTY on Windows. This will provide you with a terminal on “mote”, which you can use to ssh into other workstations on the CS network.

As written on Wikipedia,

Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network: a server and a client.

A secure shell client allows you to connect to a remote computer. If you wish to access the Vasser CS Department Unix system outside of the lab, you will need to use a secure shell. The secure utilities correspond to older, non-secure counterparts. For example:

• ssh A replacement for telnet. Allows you to “Log in” and have an interactive text connection to another computer.
• scp A replacement for rcp. Using scp, you can quickly copy files between computers over a network securely.

Instructions for installing and using these programs are given according to the operating system on your computer.

• Windows
• macOS, Unix, and Linux

To find out more about ssh:

• http://www.openssh.org.
• http://www.employees.org/~satch/ssh/faq/ssh-faq.html (covers a lot of common ssh questions.)

Contact Systems Administrator cssvradmin@cs.vassar.edu for help connecting to the Computer Science computer system. Please include your operating system, ssh software you're trying, and anything that seems to be amiss.