Laptop Setup

Setting Up A Laptop Environment

This page provides information on setting up printers and mounting cse drives for Windows and Linux on the cse-swe laptops.

Wireless Network Connection Registration

  1. Connect your laptop to the eduroam network on campus. Visit the University of Nebraska IT Services site for instructions on connecting to eduroam.
  2. After connecting to the eduroam network you can connect to the CSE server using remote NFS. This allows easy and quick transfer between your CSE server home directory and your laptop.

Windows 10 Setup

Windows 10 and 11 systems provided by the School of Computing to graduate students all come with instructions for initial login to all operating systems installed. Once initial configuration is completed on your SoC provided laptop, you can use remote NFS to share files with the CSE server and your laptop.

  1. If you don’t already have a password on the Windows side, create one:
    • Control panel -> user account -> create password
    • (Using the same password as your cse password is recommended.)
    • Note: If you don’t create a password for Windows, the system will ask you to input your user-id and password to access your Z drive whenever you reboot your laptop.
  2. Mount the Z drive (the Z drive is your window onto your home directory on the CSE filesystem)
  3. Go to “My Computer," and then go to the “Tools” menu, and click “Map Network Drive”
  4. Specify “Z:” for “Drive”, specify “cse-smb1.unl.edu\user-id” where “user-id” is your cse account name for “Folder”, and check the “Reconnect at logon” box.
  5. Now click “Connect using a different user name”, and enter “cs.unl.edu\user-id” as “User name” and your Windows password as Password. Click “OK” and then “Finish”. Now you can see your Z drive from “My Computer."
    • If you are using directories on the SE group’s server, “frost”, you need to link to it from your cse-home directory to access those directories from Windows as follows:
    • (Note: Charles has setup an auto mount map for /space. i.e. if you cd to /space/user-id on cse, cse-swe-01, etc you will be in your frost directory. To access this directory from windows you will first need to setup a smylink under Unix in your homedirectory to the frost:/space/user-id directory. See below for more details.)
  6. Login to your CSE account
  7. Setup a symbolic link in your home directory (e.g. “ln -s /space/user-id frost”)
    Once you have set up this symbolic link, when you browse your home directory (under the Z drive) under windows, a “frost” link will appear as a folder. When you click on the folder, you will be transferred to your directory on frost.
  8. Setup printers.
  9. Go to “My computer” and type “csnt” in the Address line.
  10. Type “cs.unl.eduuser-id” as user name and your Windows password, and check “Remember password”.
    • You can see all printers available to you. Find each printer you want to use, and connect it to your machine by clicking with the right mouse button on its icon.

Linux Setup

All of the following actions require root permissions, so log in as root. These instructions assume a SuSE 9.1 installation.

Connect to network drives
  1. Create a directory where the network share will be mounted. /mnt/net/<username> (where <username> is your user account on your laptop) is suggested.
  2. Change to directory ‘etc’ (cd /etc)
  3. Create a file named ‘.smbcrd’ containing the following: 
    • username=cs.unl.edu/<cse-username> 

    • password=<cse-password>

      *Where <cse-username> and <cse-password> are your CSE username and password, respectively. Make sure that only root has permissions to read this file!

  4. Edit the file ‘/etc/fstab’ and add the following line (make sure all of the following is on one line):

    1. //cse-smb1/<cse-username> /mnt/net/<username> smbfs credentials=/etc/.smbcrd,uid=<username>,gid=users 0 0

    Your CSE home directory will now be mounted into the directory you chose everytime Linux is booted. You can create a symbolic link from your CSE home directory into your ‘frost’ directory to obtain access to that storage space.

    Note: Problems have been reported with symbolic links to the “/space” directory. It is suggested that you link directly to your ‘frost’ directory:

  5. ln -s /net/frost/export/u2/<cse-username> <link-name>

 

The following instructions no longer work. Valid process now unknown. Expect unreliability of service in unix/linux.


Connect to printers

Avery Black & White Laser

  1. Open printer configuration by going to (Menu) -> Utilities -> Printing -> Printers
  2. Select Add -> Add Printer/Class…
  3. Click next, select Remote LPD Queue, then click next again
  4. For “host”, enter cseprint, and for “queue” enter ps104, then click next
  5. In the “Manufacturer” list, select HP, then select LaserJet 8150 Postscript and click next
  6. Click the “Settings…” button
  7. Click on General -> Page Size: and change the value from “A4” to “US Letter”
  8. Click on General -> Double-Sided Printing: and change the value to “Long Edge (Standard)”
  9. Click “OK”, then “next” four times
  10. Give the printer a name and description that is useful to you, then click next, and finally click finish
    • (Optional) Avery Color Laser Avoid using this printer for general printing needs.
  11. Open printer configuration by going to (Menu) -> Utilities -> Printing -> Printers
  12. Select Add -> Add Printer/Class…
  13. Click next, select Remote LPD Queue, then click next again
  14. For “host”, enter cseprint, and for “queue” enter ps104c, then click next
  15. In the “Manufacturer” list, select HP, then select Col. Las.Jet 4600 Postscript and click next
  16. Click the “Settings…” button
  17. Click on General -> Page Size: and change the value from “A4” to “US Letter”
  18. Click on General -> Double-Sided Printing: and change the value to “Long Edge (Standard)”
  19. Click “OK”, then “next” four times
  20. Give the printer a name and description that is useful to you, then click next, and finally click finish
    1. Log out from “root” and log back in with your user account
    2. Return to the printer configuration dialog
    3. Next to “Print system currently used:”, change the value to CUPS (Common UNIX Print System) if it is not already set to this value. Then click close.
  21. Reboot the system to mount the network share.