Each student has an account on the server bobolink.acad.emich.edu. The server currently runs RedHat Linux 7.3.
Here is a link to the password file entries for the class. Each line corresponds to one account and consists of several fields separated by ':' characters. Your login id is the first field on the line containing your name. (In most cases, it is your last name in lower case.) Type your login id (in lower case!) at the 'login:' prompt to log in.
Your password is Exxxxxxxx (your "new" student number). Be sure to type the 'E' in upper case!)
For security, you should change your password the first time you log into bobolink. Run the passwd command to do this. It will prompt you for your old password, then your new password, then your new password again. Choose a password that is secure (hard for others to guess) and easy for you to remember. The passwd program will complain if it thinks your new password is insecure.
Bobolink supports the ssh (secure shell) protocol for terminal-based connections. The insecure telnet protocol is not supported. (Ssh session are encrypted; telnet sessions are not. This means that with telnet, a network snoop could observe your telnet session and get your password and other sensitive information.)
To connect via ssh, you need ssh client software. Linux and Macintosh OS X come with ssh clients; just type the command 'ssh LOGIN@bobolink.acad.emich.edu' in a terminal window, replacing LOGIN by your bobolink login id. Microsoft Windows does not come with ssh, but freeware Windows ssh clients are available for download over the internet. The one I use is PuTTY -- see the PuTTY homepage for further information.
To download a Windows installer for PuTTY, just click on this link. Run it to install three programs: PuTTY (the SSH client), PsFTP (a file transfer program that uses the "secure FTP" protocol), and PSCP (another file transfer program; this one uses the "secure copy" protocol). (Again, Linux and Mac OS X come with secure FTP clients called 'sftp' and 'scp' (secure copy), respectively. Bobolink does not support the plain unencrypted ftp protocol.
Bash
Your login shell (the command-line interface that is run when you log in) is 'bash', an open source product from the Free Software Foundation. ('Bash' stands for "Bourne Again SHell", a pun on the fact that it is an enhancement of the older Unix "Bourne shell". Bash supports the standard shell operators (sequence, pipeline, i/o redirection, backgrounding, etc.) and programming features (variables, loops, conditional execution), plus a number of additional features.
Bash startup files
The files .bash_profile and .bashrc in your home directory contain bash commands that are run automatically when you log in. One of these redefines the rm command so that it prompts for confirmation when you delete a file. (You will probably come to appreciate this feature!) To override this behavior of rm, use the -f (force) option.
Emacs
Your directory contains a .emacs file of emacs commands (emacs uses a dialect of LISP as its command language) that are run whenever you start up emacs. Some of these commands configure the keyboard so that the behavior of the cursor and editing keys is similar to their behavior in Windows-based editors such as notepad. Other commands enable various features for editing C programs, such as auto-indenting and auto-exdenting. If you have an X server on your workstation and run emacs as an X client, emacs will also do color syntax highlighting of C programs.
Your file permissions
Your account is configured so that files that you create are readable only by you, not by others. Do not change this setting. You will be storing your solutions to programming assignments in your account.