Hi Class,

Few things to go over...

First, in addition to my Lab Hours, I will also be holding an online Office Hour
specifically geared toward this course, where you can come in and ask questions
pertaining to this class. The first such meeting will be held on this Thursday,
August 19 from 7-8 PM EDT, on Zoom. To access this meeting, you can go to the
course page on Blackboard, and then go to the link titled "Zoom Meetings" on
the left side of the screen, and then click "Join" for the meeting titled "CS
256 - Section 301: Week 1 Online Office Hour".

I will do a demonstration of logging in as well as demonstrating how to use the
handin program that we're using to submit assignments.

This meeting will be recorded, so if you can't make it, you can view it later.

****
You should now have class accounts, if you log in to blackboard and check under
My Grades, the entry for Section should be 301, and then your username and
password for the CS server are in their respective places. 

In the "Terminal Program" section of the article, Linux - System Setup on the
Indstate CS Wiki, there are video instructions on how to log in to the CS
server for Windows, Mac OS, Chromebook, as well as Linux. 

Link: https://cs.indstate.edu/wiki/index.php/Linux_-_System_Setup

Then read this article Linux Terminal- Files and Directories and Getting Around
and also watch the video that's linked near the top of the page. This talks
about how to navigate the CS server.

Link: https://cs.indstate.edu/wiki/index.php/Linux_Terminal_-_Files_and_Directories_and_Getting_Around

****

The first lecture from the In-Person section taught by Dr. Sternfeld is also now
available. On the Blackboard page for this course, on the left side of the
page, there should be a link titled "Zoom Meetings." Click on that, then click
on the "Cloud Recordings" Tab, and you will see it there. There are two things
I want to point out.

1. I advise skipping ahead to about 25:30, he starts talking about Unix/Linux
commands there. Before that point, we were doing administrative stuff for the
in-person section, so it's not relevant to this class. 2. The screen was
somehow stuck on his document camera the whole time, so unfortunately, his
desktop never got shared, so this lecture is pretty much an audio only affair.

****

It is crucial that you learn these Linux commands. The CS server runs on Linux,
and you will be doing all of your assignments in that environment. Within the
next couple of weeks, you are going to learn how to write programs in the C
Programming Language.

****

Once you have logged in and have practiced these basic commands, I've got a
basic exercise for you. We are using a program on the server called "handin" to
submit assignments on the server. 

Read this CS Wiki article on handin 
https://cs.indstate.edu/wiki/index.php/Handin

Then check out, using handin, the only available assignment go to that
directory, use nano to open README, and follow the instructions in that file.

****

That should be enough for now, there are some bugs that Dr. Sternfeld and I
still need to iron out, but we should have everything ready by the end of the
week.

Regards, John