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Just a little UNIX (and computer history)

for COMS 326 Web Production students

by Bob Stepno

Most Web pages these days are created with Content Management Systems or dedicated Web page editors like Adobe's Dreamweaver or Apple's iWeb. However, you also can edit your http://www.radford.edu/~yourusername Web (HTML) pages with the simplest of text editors, even edit them directly on the Web server, which is a UNIX computer somewhere across campus. At Radford, you get there by connecting to your "H drive" or "Home" space using a "terminal" program. This page of mine tells you how.

On the Macintosh, the program is named "Terminal." On some campus Windows machines it is PuTTY, a free program you can download for your own PC, with online documentation and FAQ file. With both you can use the Secure SHell protocol, SSH, to connect with the remote computer or "host."

Your "host name" is your Radford computer system username (rstepno for me), followed by the "@" sign, the name of the server you are connecting to (ruacad), and its domain (radford.edu).

Either TTY/Terminal program opens a plain-text window on your screen. You can cut and paste plain text between other Macintosh or PC applications and the terminal. (See item a.6.6 Copy and Paste in the PuTTY FAQ file; it's a little trickier than it is on a Mac, where the "command" key handles cut-and-paste shortcuts.)

On the Mac, you can make the terminal window and its type larger or smaller by holding the "command" key and pressing "+" or "-" (plus or minus). See PuTTY's setup screens for more information there.

(Read an Optional history lesson about "terminals")

Underneath its fancy desktop, each of our lab Macintoshes is actually a UNIX computer with the OS-X user interface running "on top" of UNIX. "Terminal" takes you to the UNIX level of the Macintosh, where you can use UNIX tools to create or delete docoments and folders, run programs on the Mac, or connect to other UNIX computers on the Internet.

The Web server that we see as http://www.radford.edu and the personal storage space we all see as an "H drive" is a server called "ruacad" when we connect with a terminal. Your H-drive is a folder with your e-mail name. Your public Web space is a folder inside that one, named "public_html."

Macintosh confusion alert: Radford's computer services use your e-mail "username" for two different workspaces: Your H-drive server workspace AND your personal workspace on whichever lab Macintosh you are using. The Macintosh does not mark the folder with an "H:" -- Be aware which "myusername" folder you are working in! See my Macintosh tips.

With the terminal program, you can connect to Radford's Web server using the UNIX operating system's Secure SHell program, ssh for short. (UNIX systems like to have commands in all lower-case letters.) Since this class meets in a Mac lab, this page only has instructions for that system. On Windows computers, you may use an "ssh client" or "sftp" program rather than a simple terminal. Among them are PuTTY and TTSSH, which are both free. Google can find them for you.

Next: UNIX Commands, then Going Public