6.824 - Fall 2001

Lab Information

// Assignments // Class Machines // Getting Help //


Lab assignments

Lab 1 - Multifinger
Lab 2 - TCP Proxy
Lab 3 - Web Proxy
Lab 4 - Semantic File System
Lab 5 - Distributed Stock Ticker

Class Machines

You'll use a cluster of three machines for the 6.824 labs. The machines are named:

blood.lcs.mit.edu
sweat.lcs.mit.edu
tears.lcs.mit.edu

Getting an account

To obtain an account on the class machines send mail to 6.824-register@pdos.lcs.mit.edu. Your login name will be the user name from which you send the mail (i.e. the word immediately preceding '@' in the line of your mail header that starts with "From:").

Logging into the machines

You can log into the class machines from any Athena workstation using the ssh command. For example, if your username is ``student'', you can run the command:
athena% ssh student@blood.lcs.mit.edu
student@blood.lcs.mit.edu's password: 
Authentication successful.
Last login: Mon Jan 15 18:39:16 2001 from supervised-residence.lcs.mit.edu

student@blood [~] >                                                               
It is probably easiest to work from a Athena or another Unix workstation, but you can also access the servers using Windows SSH clients such as putty or the Nifty Telnet client for MacOS.

Changing your password

Your initial password will be mailed to you when your account is created. Please change your password as soon as possible. If you do not change your password, we will assume you are not taking the class and will deactivate your account. Change your password with the passwd command on blood.lcs.mit.edu. Passwords are copied automatically from blood to the other machines every hour.

Finding a lightly loaded machine

If everyone uses the same machine to compile, things will get quite slow. Use the w command to check the load on a machine.
benb@blood [~] > w
 09:39:18 up 11:45,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.08
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
fdabek   pts/1    :0.0             22:51   10:38m  3.37s  0.03s  bash 
 ...
benb@blood [~] > 
The three numbers at the end of the first line of w's output are the load average. If these numbers are high (> 1.0) try logging into a different machine.

Aids for working on labs

There are a number of resources available to help you with the lab portion of this course:

Questions or comments regarding 6.824? Send e-mail to 6.824-staff@pdos.lcs.mit.edu.

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