For this course, you have been given an account on the web host
roadrunner.cs.wcupa.edu which is
a UNIX-style (Linux) operating system running the Apache web server.
Your user_name for this account is
your West Chester University network login
minus the "@wcupa.edu" portion, namely:
first initial + last initial + 6-digit ID,
ALL LOWER CASE!!!
The account is password-protected by a password given to you by the instructor.
This is different than your West Chester network account
and so the passwords are different as well.
Viewing your web page
This URL represents how the world sees your website — note the
tilde (~) character:
You can click on this hyperlink and replace the user_name
portion by your actual user name.
Initially you should see a directory listing with the header,
and the automatic display of a file called README.html,
something like this:
Upload your site using WinSCP
You should maintain a local copy of your web site (say,
on a flash drive) to which you can easily make changes.
We are going to describe a scheme whereby you can publish
or upload
this local copy, i.e. send it, to the roadrunner server.
WinSCP provides a graphical interface whereby you can transfer
files from the local machine to the target server, in this
case, to roadrunner.
Access to WinSCP
The version I recommend is a stand-alone executable
which runs on Windows. This is accessible from
the Computer Science server via this link:
From Firefox, you can save and then run it. From IE, you can save and run
or run directly from the browser.
I recommend downloading and saving it on a flash drive.
Using WinSCP to upload your site
Open WinSCP by double-clicking.
Type roadrunner.cs.wcupa.edu
in the Host Name field, or if a list appears,
first click the New button to get a new host.
Type your account login in the User Name field.
Select Preferences and choose the
Explorer-like radio button.
(optional) Select
Directories
(below Environment) and
check the Remember last used directory
A this point you can click the Login button to activate.
The first time you do so, a host key is saved on your computer.
Then enter your password.
Double-click to open
the
public_html
folder on the left to
show the files within on the right: this
is where your website resides.
Initially the only file is README.html.
Open the folder where your web files reside and
drag all the files (not the web folder) into the
public_html folder in WinSCP.
Go back to the browser window showing your home page:
http://roadrunner.cs.wcupa.edu/~user_name
and refresh it to pick up the changes.
Saving a WinSCP Session
After keying in the information particular to the roadrunner
server you can click Save in order to
save this session information into WinSCP's startup list.
To open the roadrunner
session after you open WinSCP, just double-click on
this line in the Saved Sessions list.
Additionally, after opening WinSCP, and selecting a specific
session you can click the
Load button so that you can modify the session information.
Make sure to click Save after any modifications.
Change your password via PuTTy
The roadrunner account is a UNIX shell account, meaning that
you can access the server and effect changes through a UNIX
command-line interface. Although this is considered complicated
and primitive by novice users, it is actually quite sophisticated
on UNIX systems.
Putty is a Windows-based
secure-shell remote login client which provides
secure (i.e., encrypted network traffic) shell-based
access to any server which supports a shell.
Access to PuTTy
Access to this is similar to that of WinSCP.
This version is accessible from the Computer Science server via this link:
Like WinSCP, you can save it and/or run it in an analogous way.
Using PuTTy
Double-click to start PuTTy and type in the Host Name field the
name of the server:
roadrunner.cs.wcupa.edu
Make sure that the SSH radio button is checked. Then click
the Open button.
The first time you do this
(possibly, whenever you do it on a deep-frozen system),
a Security Alert box
pops up asking you to store the server's cryptographic key
on your machine to establish validity of the host for future transactions.
Click Yes to this request.
Then you will be presented with a shell window with the prompt
to enter your user login:
login as: user_name
Type your account name, then Enter,
then you will be requested to enter your password:
Password: current_password(YOU WILL GET NO FEEDBACK!)
After successfully logging in, you will get the shell prompt:
user_name@roadrunner ~ $
The "~" means you're in your home directory for this account.
You are running a command shell program waiting for user commands.
Change your account password
You have to choose a "good" password, usually a combination of
letters and digits.
The password-change command will reject any new
password it considers "poor".
Then type this command (check the exact spelling)
passwd
There will follow this dialog:
Changing password for user_name
Enter login (LDAP) password: current_password(NO FEEDBACK ON ANY OF THESE!)
New UNIX password: the_new_password
Retype new UNIX password: the_new_password
Other commands and exit
Try a few other UNIX shell commands:
ls (current directory listing)
This shows the key directory public_html where your website resides.
ls public_html (public_html listing)
To leave the shell, type
exit
Saving the server access settings
You can set many of the features of the login shell to roadunner and
save these settings.
See PuTTy Secure Shell Client
for more information.