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nano on Lonestar via ssh
nano on Lonestar via ssh

nano on Lonestar via ssh

nano is a very simple editor available on most Linux systems. If you are able to use ssh, you can use nano.

To invoke it, just type:

Code Block
titleHow to start the nano text editor
nano

You'll see a short menu of operations at the bottom of the terminal window. The most important are:

  • ctl-o - write out the file
  • ctl-x - exit nano
    You can just type in text, and navigate around using arrow keys. A couple of other navigation shortcuts:
  • ctl-a - go to start of line
  • ctl-e - go to end of line

Be careful with long lines – sometimes nano will split long lines into more than one line, which can cause problems in our commands files, as you will see.

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Notepad++ for Windows
Notepad++ for Windows

Notepad++ for

PC users

Windows

Notepad++ is an open source, full-featured text editor for Windows PCs (not Macs). It has syntax coloring for many programming languages (Python, Perl, shell), and a remote file editing interface.

If you're on a Windows PC download the installer here.

Once it has been installed, start Notepad++ and follow these steps to configure it:

  • Configure the default line separator for Unix
    • In the Settings menu, select Preferences
    • In the Preferences dialog, select the New Document/Default Directory tab.
    • Select Unix in the Format section
    • Close
  • Configure a connection to TACC
    • In the Plugins menu, select NppFTP, then select Focus NppFTP Window. The top bar of the NppFTP panel should become blue.
    • Click the Settings icon (looks like a gear), then select Profile Settings
    • In the Profile settings dialog click Add new
    • Call the new profile lonestar
    • Fill in Hostname (lonestar.tacc.utexas.edu) and your TACC user ID
    • Connection type must be SFTP
    • Close

To open the connection, click the blue (Dis)connect icon then select lonestar connection. It should prompt for your password. Once you've authenticated, a directory tree ending in your home directory will be visible in the NppFTP window. You can click the the (Dis)connect icon again to Disconnect when you're done.

Since much of the editing we'll do will be in your SCRATCH area at TACC, rather than having to navigate around TACC's complex file system tree, let's just create a symbolic link to your SCRATCH directory in your home directory. Then you'll be able to get there just by clicking on the scratch folder in the Notepad++ Remote directory tree.

Code Block
titleCreating a shortcut to the main Lonestar working directories
ln -s $SCRATCH scratch
ln -s $WORK work
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Komodo Edit for Mac and Windows
Komodo Edit for Mac and Windows

Komodo Edit for Mac and Windows

Komodo Edit is another free, full-featured text editor for both Macintosh and Windows that will let you edit files over ssh. Download the appropriate install image here.

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MacFuse/MacFusion/TextWrangler for Mac
MacFuse/MacFusion/TextWrangler for Mac

MacFuse/MacFusion/TextWrangler for Mac

users

Want your Lonestar files to appear like any other place on your hard drive? You can do this using MacFuse/MacFusion on a Mac. Download and install MacFuse and MacFusion. Restart your computer. Open MacFusion. Click the + menu in the window and select SSHFS. Enter your login information for lonestar. Choose connect. The remote file system will appear in Finder (depending on your settings it may be on the desktop or inside the computer shortcut in the side of a Finder window). You can also click on the mounted volume within MacFusion and choose "Reveal" from the gear menu.

In order to make navigating to the different file systems on lonestar easier ($SCRATCH and $WORK), you can set up some shortcuts with these commands that create folders that "link" to those locations. (Run the commands when logged into Lonestar with a terminal, from your home directory).

Code Block
titleCreating a shortcut to the main Lonestar working directories
ln -s $SCRATCH scratch
ln -s $WORK work

TextWrangler is a recommended FreeWare text editor for MacOS X. (It even keeps with the theme TACC has going with naming its clusters!) You can use it to directly edit text files on Lonestar with MacFuse/MacFusion using a nice GUI. It also allows you to edit a remote file via SSH.

Tip: Files beginning in a dot (.) like (.profile_user) are "hidden" and won't show up when you are navigating in Finder. There is a way to turn on showing these files in finder, but it can get annoying because they will show up everywhere. If you use the TextWrangler "open" command, there is a box that you can check to have these files show to open them.

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