The department Linux system

Here you find information on how to log in to the University’s Linux system from one of the computer rooms for students on Campus Ångströmlaboratoriet.

Windows in all computer rooms

In all computer rooms on campus Ångstrumslaboratoriet you find computers with Windows.

ThinLinc

On campus Ångströmlaboratoiet there are a number of large computers (servers) running Linux somewhere in a basement. As a student, you will never physically interact with these server computers. Instead, you log in to these servers from Windows to get access to the Linux desktop environment on the same screen as Windows. The system used for this is called ThinLinc.

Access Linux from Windows

To access the Linux system, you must first log into Windows and from Windows use ThinLinc Client to log in to a Linux server.

Log in to Windows

To log in to Windows, enter the username of your student account on the form abcd1234 and Password A.

Software Center (ZENworks)

Somewhere on the Windows desktop you will find Software center (Zenworks).

Double-click the Software center (Zenworks) icon. Now a new windows opens with available software.

The software you find here may already be installed on the computer. If a program is not already installed, it will be installed the first time you trying to use the program.

Start the ThinLinc client

From Software Center, find the ThinLinc client.

Double-click on ThinLinc Client. If ThinLinc Client is already installed , it will start quite quickly. If not installed already, ThinLInc Client will first be installed and then started.

The Windows taskbar

Once the ThinLinc client started, the ThinLinc client icon will appear in the Windows taskbar.

Log in to Linux with the ThinLinc Client

Click on the ThinLinc Client icon in the taskbar to log in to the Linux system. Enter the following login information.

Server: thinlinc.student.it.uu.se.
Username: Your student account username on the form abcd1234.
Password: Your Password A.

Click Connect to login. The first time you log in, you may see the following message.

If you see the above message, click on Continue.

The Linux desktop

After a successful login, new window will open with the Linux desktop environment. You can maximize or resize this window, just like for any other window in Windows. Thus, in the Linux desktop window in Windows you interact with the Linux system that is actually running on a remote server.

The department Linux system runs Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS using the Gnome flashback desktop environment with the Numix desktop theme.

The Gnome terminal

You can open a terminal in two ways:

From the Applicatinos menu at the top left of the desktop: Applications → Accessories → Terminal.
By pressing the keyboard shorcut CTRL + ALT + T .

After a few seconds a new terminal window should open.

In the upper left corner of the white area of the terminal window you see abcd1234@arrhenius:~$ . This it the shell prompt with your username on the form abcd1234 and the name of the Linux server you are connected to, in this example arrhenius. The shell prompt you see might be different.

The shell prompt

In the above example, the prompt shows the username of the logged in user abcd1234 together with the name of the physical Linux server arrhenius used. You should see your own user name. If you are logged into a different physical Linux server you will also see a different server name in the prompt.

It is also possible to tweak the prompt to show custom information such as your username, local time etc.

No shell prompt in instructions

Since the appearance of the shell prompt might vary, in all further instructions the shell prompt will be omitted and commands you enter att the shell prompt will be presented in a box like this.

ls -F  # Example shell command

If you hover over the box above, a copy button will appear in the upper right corner. Press this button to copy the text in the box. Now you can paste the copied command at the shell prompt in your terminal and press enter to execute the command.

Log out from the Linux system

There are two options for logging out from the Linux system. To log out of Linux you can:

Click on the icon with a person walking through a door at the top.
Click on the icon with a computer at the top right and then select Log Out to log out.

After you log out, the Linux window closes. If you logged out by mistake you must restart the ThinLinc Client and login again to continue working with Linux.

You can access the [department Linux System ][dep-linux] remotely using SSH to login to one of the student servers.

You will not be able to access the graphical desktop environment.
But, you can start graphical applications from the command line (shell) if you use X forwarding together with SSH.

SSH with X forwarding on Linux, macOS and Windows

Read more here about how to install SSH with X forwarding support on your system.

In the below example, a user with user name abcd1234 uses the ssh command with the -X option to enable X forwarding to log in to the department Linux server trygger.it.uu.se.

ssh -X abcd1234@trygger.it.uu.se

One you are logged in, you can start graphical applications from the Linux shell. You can for example run Mars.

mars

To edit C source code you can for example use the VS Code source code editor remotely.

code

Known problems

A list of know problems with the department Linux system and workarounds.