System Tips for CS Instructors

Before your students can use the submit### script with your course the following prerequisites must be met:

  1. A course account must exist.
  2. You need access to the course account.
  3. Your students each need an account on our system.
  4. A link must exist or be made for your course number so that submit### exists.

If any of the above items need to be set up please let me know well in advance of your first lab!

To create the dropboxes:

-. Become the course user

you@yourmachine:~$ ssh cs555@vnc

-. Deal with any existing dropboxes

From the home of the course user look for any existing directories called “dropbox”, “Old” or “old”.

If a dropbox directory exists from a previous semester and a directory called “Old” or “old” exists, rename and move the dropbox into the this directory.1) Please rename it to dropbox-YYYY-[spring|fall]

cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ mv ~/dropbox ~/Old/dropbox-2007-fall

Otherwise if a dropbox directory exists from a previous semester and a directory called “Old” or “old” does not exist, please create the directory ~/Old and then move and rename the dropbox as above.

cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ mkdir ~/Old
cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ mv ~/dropbox ~/Old/dropbox-2007-fall

-. Create and populate the new dropbox

Make a new dropbox with modification bits of 750

cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ mkdir -m 750 ~/dropbox

Decend into the new dropbox cd ~/dropbox. Make a directory with permision set to 730 for each student (mkdir can take all the names in one go)

cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ cd ~/dropbox
cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ mkdir -m 733 frbaggin luskywal isnewton ajayer jostewar mifoucau stcolber jaderrid

-. Confirm all is good

Please take a moment to ensure group and permisions are set correctly, your dropbox directory should look something like this:

  cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$ ls -la    
  total 8
  drwxr-xr-x  15 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 .
  drwxr-x--x  15 cs555    asprey2     1024 Jan 29 09:16 ..
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 ajayer
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:19 frbaggin
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:19 isnewton
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 jaderrid
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 jostewar
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:19 luskywal
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 mifoucau
  drwx-wx-wx   2 cs555    asprey2      512 Jan 29 09:20 stcolber
  cs555@vnc:~/dropbox$

Check that the permisions on the directory itself and on the student dropboxes match these. If they do not, use chmod to correct them:

 chmod 755 ~/dropbox
 chmod 733 ~/dropbox/*
 

Finaly, with the exception of cs101, check that the group is set to asprey22), if not fix that with chgrp:

chgrp -R asprey2 ~/dropbox

This information has been moved to ewc


1)
If both “Old” and “old” exist, use “Old”. It's my call and I'm going to make it.
2)
for cs101 the group is cslab