Using the student server for web pages

Connecting to the server and setting up your account

Here is a short (very short) introduction to Linux shell commands.

The student server, known as student or puma serves several purposes. One of them is to support the DeVry Student email accounts. The other is to provide access to Linux. The first step in using the student server for your web pages is to connect to the computer.

This is done with telnet. You start by opening a command prompt window from any windows machine connected to the Internet. You can do this from home exactly the same way. Some of the school computers have a shortcut on the desktop that will do this.

Once the command prompt is open, you enter the command telnet student.dpg.devry.edu The command prompt window should now look like this:

telnet Connection

After you hit ENTER, the display will change to the login prompt for Linux. Your username is your D number, with a lowercase d. Linux is lowercase oriented. After you type your D number, hit ENTER (not tab like you might in Windows). Then you are prompted for your password. If this is your first time in, your default password is the 2 digit month and 4 digit year of your birth. In either case, it is the same password you use for your student email account.

Linux login

After you login, you should see something like this. The last few lines are information on who is logged in and so may be different.

Linux login sucess

The Linux shell command ls will show what files and directories (folders) you have. Unless you have used this system before, there will probably only be the public_html directory.

Initial directory listing

Now we change directories into the public_html directory so we can set it up. This part you only have to do once for each assignment. It makes it easier to keep track of your projects if you create a new directory for each assignment. The mkdir command creates a directory.

Creating lab directory

That is all we have to do to set up the Linux side of the system. Now we have to get our html files over to the student server from the Windows side. You can do all you work on the student server, but I'm not going to add a tutorial on Linux editing and such to these notes.



Transferring files to the student server.

To copy files from a Windows machine ( or indeed from any other kind of computer) we will use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). There are other ways, but these notes are covering ftp. Here I will show you how to use the WS_FTP tool to accomplish this. This is installed on all the DeVry Windows machines and a free version is available (at least the last time I looked). The notes below are copied from a separate document about using FTP that includes how to use it from the command line.

Using WS_FTP

WS_FTP is a GUI FTP client. It is available free as an evaluation version. It doesn't time out, but you will have to click on a button each time you use it unless to pay for it. It is available on all the DeVry lab computers. Once you start it up, you have to specify the computer you want to reach.

In our case, the name of the machine is puma.dpg.devry.edu. You should fill out the form similar to what you see here. Use your own login and password.

WS_FTP Connection Form

After you click OK, you will see the initial display. On the left is the source machine, usually your computer. On the right is the destination machine, in this case, puma.

WS_FTP Initial Display

Navigate on the left side until you see the files you want to send. On the right side, navigate into the directory you want the files to be in. You can create new directories on the right side if you need to. If you are copying an entire directory, then make sure you can see it on the left side.

WS_FTP Ready Display

Select the file or files you want to copy from the display on the left side. You can select multiple files by hold the <ctrl> key while you click. You can select a range of files by clicking on the first file and then holding the <shift> key while clicking on the second. On the whole, the windows here work like the Explorer windows in Windows. Once you have chosen the files, you can click on the right facing arrow button in the center if the display. To copy files from the destination machine to your computer, do the same things but switch sides and use the left facing arrow.

WS_FTP Copy Display

While the copying is being done, messages will be displayed at the bottom of the window and for larger files a progress bar will be shown.

After the copying is complete, the program will redraw the displays to show the new status. If there are problems, error messages in red will appear at the problem. Most can be solved by trying again and occasionally by closing the connection and starting over. 

After the files are copied

At this point, the file or files that make up your web site have been copied to the student server. You can check this by going back to the telnet window, changing directories to the assignment directory you copied the files into and use the ls command to see the files.

Checking the file transfer

Lastly, we use a browser to check out the site. The URL for your pages is:
http://www.student.dpg.devry.edu/~dxxxxxxxx/asg1/file.html
where the dxxxxxxxx is changed to your D number. The asg1 is the directory you created for this assignment and the file name at the end is the name of the file you copied to the server. This URL should work from anywhere so you can show off your new web skills to friends and family.

Seeing the page in the browser

If something doesn't look quite right, you can change the files on your host computer, save the file and go back to the WS_FTP window to copy the files again. Then refresh the browser and you should see the changes. It is usually best to hold the shift key down while clicking on the refresh icon. This forces the browser to reload the page from the web server. Otherwise, it might reload it from cache and you won't see the changes.

Shutting down when you are finished.

Once the directories are made and you have seen the file transfer work, you can leave the telnet session by typing exit and then you can close the window. When you are through working you shut down the WS_FTP connection by first clicking on the Close button and then the Exit button. The next time you want to work on this project, you won't need the telnet window since the directories are already there. You will just need the WS_FTP connection to copy any changes you make.