Using Odum Institute Lab Applications on vcl.unc.edu

Transcription

1 Using Odum Institute Lab Applications on vcl.unc.edu Access Odum Institute Lab Applications Remotely!... 2 Getting Started... 2 Reserving an Application Environment... 3 Connecting to the Environment... 4 Ending Your Reservation... 8 Need More Time? Extend Your Reservation... 8 We are here to help... 9 Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 1 of 9

2 Access Odum Institute Lab Applications Remotely! There s a new way to access Odum Institute lab applications at the UNC Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL). The VCL allows users to access select Odum Institute lab applications from any computer that has Remote Desktop software, whether it is a Windows, Macintosh, or UNIX computer. Currently the Odum Institute has made available the following application environments: Atlas.ti/NVivo: Includes Atlas.ti 6, NVivo 8, f4, Google Earth, Microsoft Access and Word, and CDC EZ-Text. GIS/Spatial Analysis Applications: Includes ArcGIS 9.3.1, ENVI+IDL 4.7, and many other spatial analysis applications. LaTeX: Includes MikTeX 2.7, TeXNicCenter, and JabRef. More applications and environment suites may be forthcoming. Getting Started To access these applications, go to in your web browser. Select Shibboleth (UNC-Chapel Hill) to get to the login page. You will then get a screen asking for your ONYEN and password. Once you login, you will be offered several options: New Reservation: This option allows you to select an application environment to use. Current Reservations: This option allows access, extend, or end a reservation. Help: Gateway to help documents on using the VCL. We ll start by selecting the New Reservation link. Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 2 of 9

3 Reserving an Application Environment The drop down box specifies which environment you want to use. The specific list of environments available may vary from person to person. The Odum Institute environments are noted with the [Odum] tag at the beginning of the environment name. After you select the environment, you will see a description of the environment which will describe the applications in the environment and other information about it. Below the description is a request for when you want to use the environment. Most people select the Now button; the Later button is useful if you want to use an environment at a given time and guarantee that it will be available. When you choose Now, the VCL gives an estimate for how long it will take to prepare your environment for you. In most cases if the environment is already available, it can be prepared in less than a minute. If it is not ready, it may take 8-20 minutes, depending on VCL usage. Sometimes an environment will not be available for use because the maximum number of permitted users is already using the environment. In that situation, you will need to come back later to use your environment. The duration option asks how long you want to use the environment. You can ask to use it for 30 minutes up to a maximum of 8 hours. If you discover your duration was too short, you can come back later and extend your reservation. Finally we create the reservation. Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 3 of 9

4 This screen will show how long it takes to wait for the environment. The page will automatically refresh, so if it will take time to prepare your environment, you will see it. Or you can close your page, and then come back to vcl.unc.edu and select Current Reservations to see the reservation (it will not go away just because the page is gone). Connecting to the Environment When the environment is ready, the screen output will change: To use the environment, click the Connect button. You have to click the button within 15 minutes of the environment being available, or the environment will be recycled for another user. Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 4 of 9

5 When you click the Connect button, you get the address of the computer to connect to, the username you should use (which is usually your ONYEN), and the password you need to enter. The password is not your ONYEN password, and changes with every reservation you make. You must enter it in the exact case that it is specified (type it in with the exact upper and lower case letters), or you will not be able to access it. Near the bottom may be some notes on how to use the environment. These can be helpful if some applications require special instructions. In the case of the image we are using, the first line states that it is very important to logout when you are done with the environment. On a Windows (or on a Mac with the Microsoft Remote Desktop client) computer, you can click the Get RDP File button to connect to the environment. If you are not on Windows, you will probably need to enter the IP address, username, and password into your Remote Desktop program (there are many free programs available that do allow you to use Remote Desktop if you do not have one). When you click Get RDP File, you should open the file rather than saving it: Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 5 of 9

6 Then you may get a message asking if you want to connect: If you click the Details button, you will be asked whether you want to use your hard drives, clipboard, or printers on the remote computer. You should select all of these so that you can access your local computer drives on the environment. If you need to use a USB drive with the remote environment, make sure it is inserted in your local computer at this time and the Drives checkbox is selected, otherwise you will not be able to insert one later. Now you are ready to click Connect. You ll then get a window with what looks like a Windows login screen. Enter the user name and password that you were provided on the Connect screen. Remember: this is NOT the password you use to check your ! Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 6 of 9

7 Now you are connected. You will now see, after a brief delay, the environment. It looks just like any other Windows computer: There are many applications that are available, some of which will be on the desktop, and some will be available through the Start menu. Most of the Odum Institute environments include SSH, SFTP, and AFS. You can use this environment just like your computer. You have full Administrator rights, and if you need to, you can install any application you need or want. But remember: any changes you make to this environment will be removed after you end the reservation. It is important that you save any files you need to keep somewhere off the environment! If you shared your drives to the image, you can access them by opening up My Computer. At the bottom are the drives from your local computer, each letter corresponding to a drive on your computer. Remember, these drives will only show up if you clicked the Drives checkbox when you were connecting. And only the drives that were connected to your computer when you first connected to the environment will be listed. You can also access a shared drive by typing in \\tsclient\[drive_letter] in the run box or address bar. For example, if your primary hard drive is the C drive, then it would be located at \\tsclient\c. Some Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 7 of 9

8 older applications may not be able to be able to recognize this kind of path; you may need to experiment to see what works for your particular application. Ending Your Reservation When you are done with your session, choose the Logout icon on your desktop if it is available, or choose Start > Logout. If you want to temporarily close your session, you can close the window or choose Start > Disconnect. This will preserve your environment state, but your session may be ended if it the duration is exceeded and some environments may end your session after you are disconnected for more than 15 minutes. We always recommend using Logout. Once you ve logged out, go back to the vcl.unc.edu Current Reservations page, and select the End button. When you click the End button and confirm, your reservation will end, and you will no longer be able to access your environment. Any changes you have made or files you have placed on the environment will be completely removed and sanitized; nothing that you have done will be viewable by anyone else. Need More Time? Extend Your Reservation If for some reason you need more time, click on the Edit button instead on the Current Reservations page. You ll then be asked how long you want to extend your reservation. You can extend your reservation by 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and one hour, all the way up to a total reservation time of 8 hours. Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 8 of 9

9 We are here to help Using the VCL: A number of documents on using the VCL are available by clicking on the Help button on the VCL website. These are very helpful for using the VCL. You can also find these documents by visiting help.unc.edu and searching for VCL. Need more help using the VCL or have a problem with the VCL: ITS Research Computing, who administers the Emerald cluster, runs the VCL. They can be contacted by ing research@unc.edu, and they are happy to answer VCL usage questions. Questions about an Odum Institute VCL environment: If you have a question about an Odum Institute VCL environment, feel free to odum-vcl@unc.edu. Or you can visit the Odum Institute in the basement of Manning Hall; all of the applications and many more are available in our computer labs in Manning Hall 01 and Manning Hall 16. Access Odum Lab Applications Remotely! vcl.unc.edu Page 9 of 9