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There are a number of ways PeANUt can be accessed or used on external sites.

Useful References

Chapters 7 and 9 of the Student Computing Environment (Unix commands), and the CS Undergraduate Student System Documentation (sections on file transfer and home computing).

Remote access to the CS Student System

You can get a remote connection with a Unix command line interface via Secure Shell (SSH). The client is called partch.anu.edu.au . On a Windows box, the utility PuTTY can be used to do this I recommend that you also install PSCP and PuTTYgen at the same time, and get a copy of the documentation, for more advanced usage). On Mac and Linux boxes, SSH is normally already installed and is accessed from the command line: ssh -Y u0419191@partch.anu.edu.au.

An arguably superior alternative to PuTTY is Cygwin, which adds a Linux-like command line interface (including SSH) to a Windows box. One advantage is that it has an X11 windows server (startx). When you download, I recommend selecting `Install All'. It works well on Windows 2000 and XP; not so well on Vista (but then, nothing does...).

Alternatively, you could edit your file locally, using your favorite editor, and use pscp / scp (see below) to copy the file to partch for compilation. This will be tedious if you have to type your password every time though, so I recommend that you set up SSH keys (see below).

Transferring files to/from the CS Student System

It is safest and most convenient if this is done via the scp command (available with SSH). With PuTTY, there is a corresponding utility called PSCP (pscp.exe), which uses a DOS command interface.

You can use ftp to transfer files to/from your University account (on Windows PCs) using the command (from the CS student system) ftp -p pebble-ftp

Setting up SSH keys for passwordless connections to the CS Student System

Setup your SSH keys on your home computer via ssh-keygen -t dsa on Linux, and via PuTTYgen on Windows (see the PuTTY documentation for details). Ensure that you give an empty passphrase. To complete the process, on the CS student system, you need to execute the command ssh-keygen -t dsa as well (give an empty passphrase) and add your public RSA key (typically stored in a file called id_rsa.pub on your home computer) to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the CS student system.

Seeing up SSH keys on your account on the student system will obviate you having to type your password when using the submit command. All you need to do is add the contents of the file id_rsa.pub here to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys as well.

The above method involves the use of an empty passphrase. This is insecure in the sense that if the account where you log from becomes compromised, your student account may become compromised as a result. An alternate method would be to give a non-empty passphrase (and remember it!). Then for every session, run ssh-add. This will ask you for that passphrase, but for every ssh connection you make in that session afterwards, you will not need to type a password or passphrase (thanks to Sohum Banerjea, COMP2300 2008, for pointing this out).

Running Remote Windows on the CS Student System

From a Linux box (or Mac, or Windows PC with Cygwin), you can also avoid the above problem and open windowing applications from partch remotely, provided ssh has been set up to do `X windows tunnelling' (and you start an X11 server program if on Mac / Cygwin). However, you will need an excellent broadband connection for this to be satisfactory. Then you can create editor and Peanut windows remotely from the command line on partch.

On Windows with only PuTTY, you can still do so provided you have an X11 windows server installed. This is the case with the ANU DOI PCs which have PuTTy and WinAxe installed. You need to enable X11 tunneling in PuTTy; further details are here. You have all seen me struggling with this in lectures - enough said.

Installing PeANUt on your Home Computer

First you need to download the source code, and unpack it. After that, it is likely to be non-trivial. If you have Linux with gcc and Tcl/Tk (8.4 or later), it might not be too hard (but you will probably have to install the Tix library - instructions are in the Peanut tarball). On a Mac or other Unix-based machine, you may also have to edit the Makefiles.

On Windows/Cygwin, you can install the binaries (assemble etc). I recently did this on XP - I did not have to change anything (the compilation and installation of the GUI will fail but ignore this). It will be problematic to get the GUI installed, as of 2005 Cygwin ceased to support Tcl/Tk.

However, there is support for Tcl/Tk and Tix on Windows itself, so it is in theory possible to install PeANUt on Windows/Cygwin or even just plain Windows.

If you happen to have any success in installing PeANUt on a non-Linux box, it would be great to have the benefit of your experience, and have further instructions / tips collated here. As stated elsewhere, DCS cannot provide support for this, but you may get useful suggestions by posting to our discussion forum.

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