IT FAQs

If you are accessing ECE resources from outside of McGill’s network, make sure that you are connected to McGill’s VPN.
For other VPN related problems, contact itsupport [at] mcgill.ca (subject: VPN%3A%20) (McGill IT Support)

Trottier Labs Remote Access

Consult your professor or instructor in regards to what range of assigned computers your course-group has access to in Trottier labs and remotely connect to the given range as shown below:

1. Connect to McGill Cisco VPN before remote desktop connection as shown in the following link→ How to VPN
2. Visit http://025englabs.campus.mcgill.ca/maps/ECE%20Labs and select your lab from the list
3. Choose an available workstation from the list and click on 'Connect'
4. An RDP file will be downloaded to your computer, which you can click on for accessing the lab's workstation

*If you are using an operating system, different from Windows (macOS, linux) you must first download a compatible RDP client for your operating system.
**The PDF version of this guide can be downloaded here: ece-rdpguidefall2020.pdf

For other issues and queries related to Remote Desktop Sessions, email it.ece [at] mcgill.ca (subject: From%20FAQ%3A%20Remote%20Desktop%20to%20Trottier%20Computers) (ECE-IT)

Available software for users with graduate Unix accounts:

• Cadence
• Matlab
• Mentor Graphics software
• Synopsys tools
• Xilinx ISE and EDK - also available for Windows

How to start CAD tools

To run Cadence for example, do the following:

• Follow the steps under Linux system -> How to login (X2Go Desktop Session is recommended)
• SSH to C10.ece.mcgill.ca (or C01.ece.mcgill.ca, C02.ece.mcgill.ca, C03.ece.mcgill.ca or Solo.ece.mcgill.ca )
• Login with firstname.lastname @ mail.mcgill.ca and your e-mail password
• Run the following commands:
  > exec tcsh
  > source /CMC/scripts/cadence
  > cadence or > cadence -t cmosxxx (whichever technology you need)

CADActivate

Students requiring access to CAD software will need to run CADActivate, so that the student’s McGill account is added to the license access list. Please refer to the document below for instruction on CADActivate.

CADActivate document

CADpass

Students requiring access to CMC software that does not have central network licenses available will need to use CADpass to gain access to these licenses through CMC. 

CADpass Document:  cadpass.pdf

Network connection -- policy for graduate students and researchers:

When a new graduate student or researcher arrives at the department, he/she needs to contact the ECE IT Services team at it.ece [at] mcgill.ca with their supervisor affiliation and their desk/office location in the McConnell bldg.
ECE IT Services will assign each computer used by a graduate student or researcher an IP address and provide them with basic setup instructions.

If a graduate student or researcher connects a computer to a network jack using a random IP address without contacting the IT Services team, the network jack he/she used will be disconnected (the corresponding switch port will be shut down) immediately after the student/researcher is notified. 

If we fail to reach the user the disconnection will be done within 24 hours at the most (unless the IP address conflicts with another one that is already in use, in which case it will be disconnected immediately after notification).

No IP address hijacking or any other IT protocol violation will be tolerated.

To which e-mail address will the ECE System Administrators send official messages?

From time to time we send important announcements, updates, or emergency messages to ECE students and staff. These messages and all other official McGill communications will only be sent to your McGill Email Address. Your e-mail address will be in the format of firstname.lastname [at] mail.mcgill.ca for students, and firstname.lastname [at] mcgill.ca for staff.

If you do not wish to use the McGill Email Address given to you upon admission, you can forward your McGill Email Address to your preferred e-mail.

For e-mail help please follow this link: McGill e-mail

How do I configure my e-mail client software?

Visit the Index of configuration articles for recommended e-mail clients and devices.

Email best practices

Refer to the following article for e-mail best practices.

The ECE Unix user environment:

Your default shell is bash. However, you can switch to tcsh (by running "exec tcsh" after you login).

Where to login:

All ECE students can login to the following systems:

• 156TRLinux.ece.mcgill.ca – shell only
• 156TRPowerLinux-1.ece.mcgill.ca – Desktop Session (KDE or XFCE)

How to log in:

Login to the UNIX workstations with your McGill account firstname.lastname [at] mail.mcgill.ca and your e-mail password.

How to run UNIX based X-Windows applications on Windows workstations

To run Matlab for example, do the following:

• Enable OpennSSH for Windows 10 or install putty (All our Trottier workstations already have an SSH client installed)
• Make sure X-Win32 (or equivalent, such as XMing [.pdf]) is running
• SSH to XXXX.ece.mcgill.ca [where XXXX is the server name]
• Alternativley, open putty, enter XXXX.ece.mcgill.ca ssh hostname and Enable X11 forwading under Connection -> SSH -> X11
• Login with firstname.lastname [at] mail.mcgill.ca and your e-mail password
• Run the following command:
  > matlab

You can use the same procedure to run any X based application available to you.

MobaXterm - SSH client with built in X-Windows system

1. Open a web browser and go to here to download the software or go to (https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/)
2. Click on Downloads and select the Home Edition
3. Install the software and then launch the software by clicking on the short-cut on the desktop
4. Once the software has started, click on "session" to start the connection process.
5. Make sure that SSH is selected and enter the server information and user information (first.last [at] mail.mcgill.ca) --> click OK to start your SSH session.
6. Start your CAD software like normal and MobaXterm will take care of the rest.

1. Open MobaXTerm and click on session
2. Select SSH, enter the name of the remote host, and user name
3. Click on the "Advanced SSH" settings tab
4. Find where it says "Remote Environment" and change it to a supported desktop of your choice (KDE or XFCE)
5. Click ok to connect to the server and show the desktop

X2GO Desktop Session on Windows workstations:

1. Download and install Windows X2Go client for Windows (All our Trottier workstations already have X2Go client installed)
2. Under New Session window enter name of the remote host and your user information (first.last [at] mail.mcgill.ca)
3. Plect KDE under the session type (please, note that gnome is not supported by X2Go)

If you use Mac OS workstation, you will also need to install XQuartz.

How to mount your Unix home directory on a Windows PC (SAMBA):

• Right click on My Computer and select "Map Network Drive".
• Select any free drive letter for "Drive" and type in \\storm.ece.mcgill.ca\DAS_username under "Folder" (e.g. \\storm.ece.mcgill.ca\jdoe1)
• Click on "Connect using a different user name" and type in CAMPUS\DAS_username (e.g. CAMPUS\jdoe1) and your DAS password for credentials.
• Click on OK and then Finish. 

Mounting a Windows share on a Mac client

• Open Finder, click on Go and select Connect to Server
• Type smb://<IP Address|Computer Name>/<Share>
  Example: smb://expo.campus.mcgill.ca/research
• Enter your CAMPUS/DAS_username (e.g. CAMPUS/jdoe1) and McGill e-mail password
• DAS stands for Dialup Access Services and DAS username can also be refered as Short username. DAS username is issued to every registered student. Please see link for more information. To find your DAS username, please read this link

Mounting a Windows Share on a Linux client

• Login to your Linux system as the root user or use the su command
• Create the required mount point
  i.e: mkdir /mnt/share
• Use the mount command with your DAS username as follows
  mount -t cifs //server/share -o username=campus/DAS_username /mnt/share
• After running the mount command you'll be asked for your McGill e-mail password
• Access the share by changing to the mounted directory
  i.e.: cd /mnt/share

Mounting a Windows Share on a Windows client

• Right click on "My Computer" and choose "Map Network Drive.."
• For "Drive" choose an available letter from the drop down list (i.e. M)
• For "Folder" type \\<Computer Name>\<Share>
  Example: \\Expo.campus.mcgill.ca\HOME1\ECE\Your DAS (short) username
• Enable (checkmark) the "Reconnect at logon" if you want this drive to appear next time you logon to your machine
• Click on the "different user name" link
• For "User name" enter first.last [at] mcgill.ca (or first.last [at] mail.mcgill.ca)
• For "Password" enter your McGill e-mail password.
• Click OK
• Click Finish

Mounting your Unix home directory on a Windows client

• Right click on My Computer and select "Map Network Drive".
• Select any free drive letter for "Drive" and type in \\storm.ece.mcgill.ca\DAS_USERNAME (e.g. smb://storm.ece.mcgill.ca/jdoe1) under "Folder"
• Click on "Connect using a different user name" and type in CAMPUS\DAS_username (e.g. CAMPUS\jdoe1) and your McGill e-mail password for credentials.
• Click on OK and then Finish.

Mounting your Unix home directory on a Mac client

• Open Finder, click on Go and select Connect to Server
• Type smb://storm.ece.mcgill.ca/DAS_USERNAME (e.g. smb://storm.ece.mcgill.ca/jdoe1)
• Enter your CAMPUS/DAS_username (e.g. CAMPUS/jdoe1) and McGill e-mail password

Printing for Graduate Students: If you do not know the IP address of the printer you wish to access, please send an e-mail to it.ece [at] mcgill.ca (ECE IT services) , requesting the IP address for the printer located in your room number.

Using a McGill network printer from a Mac client

• Press Command+P
• Choose Add Printer from the popup menu, this will open the Printer Setup wizard
• Click on IP Printer, and enter the IP Address and information related to the printer.
• Print a test page to ensure that the printer works properly

Using a McGill network printer from a Windows client

• Open your printer control applet (Start Menu ->Control Panel->Printers and Faxes) and click on the Add Printer button to launch the wizard
• At the Wizard click on the “Next” button and at the next screen select "Local printer attached to this computer" then click Next.
• Select "Create a new port: " and specify the type of port as "Standard TCP/IP Port" then click Next. The computer will launch the Port Wizard for the creation of a new port for use by the printer. Please Click Next
  • Enter the IP address of the printer (i.e. 132.206.76.13) and enter the name for the Port as well (i.e. Office 633), then click Next.
  • Select “Hewlett Packard Jet Direct” from the pull down menu, then click Next. Review the information and if everything looks good click Finish
• Now select the type of printer from the next screen, then select Next.
• You will need to assign a name to the printer, and you can set it to default if so desired then click next
• At the Sharing screen, select no and click next.
• Print a test page to make sure that the printer works properly
• After the test page prints, click OK, and then review the information, and click Finish if every thing works correctly.

Using a McGill network printer from a Windows client (wireless connection)

• Connect to McGill VPN to get access to the network printer.
• Open console window (by typing "cmd" after pressing "windows" key). Ping the printer by typing "ping <printer DNS name>.ece.mcgill.ca (e.g. ping lp620.ece.mcgill.ca). If you receive the response (four packets), then you can reach the printer and may proceed with the next step. Othervise, you do not have access to printer. It can be related to your VPN connection. Please send an e-mail to ECE IT services and ask to place your IP address to the ECE VPN Pool.
• In your web browser open http://<printer DNS name>.ece.mcgill.ca. From tab "HP Smart Install" download a package to install the printer driver and software on your machine. If there is no driver package provided, try to find it at the website of apropriate printer manufacturer.
• At the end of the installation, direct the installer to search the printer on a wired network by host name "<printer DNS name>.ece.mcgill.ca". The installation is over and you should be able to print documents.
• If you have problems please contact ECE IT services.

Printing for Undergraduate Students: 

uPrint - Campus Printing

McGill University offers a Campus Printing (uPrint) solution for students, faculty and staff. This campus-wide copy and print management solution allows any member of the McGill community with a valid McGill ID card to send a print job to the central print queue, and pick it up from the Xerox device of their choice.

• uPrint - Campus Printing

For more details regarding uPrint please visit the McGill knowledge base

Consult your professor or instructor in regards to what range of assigned computers your course-group has access to in Trottier labs and remotely connect to the given range as shown below:

1. Connect to McGill Cisco VPN before remote desktop connection as shown in the following link→ How to VPN
2. Visit http://025englabs.campus.mcgill.ca/maps/ECE%20Labs and select your lab from the list
3. Choose an available workstation from the list and click on 'Connect'
4. An RDP file will be downloaded to your computer, which you can click on for accessing the lab's workstation

If you are using an operating system, different from Windows (macOS, linux) you must first download a compatible RDP client for your operating system.

For other issues and queries related to VPN and Remote Desktop Sessions, email it.ece [at] mcgill.ca (subject: From%20FAQ%3A%20Remote%20Desktop%20to%20Trottier%20Computers) (ECE-IT)

To obtain software distributed by the department

The software licensed to the department can be found on the following network share: \\expo.campus.mcgill.ca\research\

Make sure that you are on the McGill LAN (connect to the VPN first if you are trying to access the drive over the McGill wireless network or from a remote PC)

To open the network share go to Start-> Run, enter \\expo.campus.mcgill.ca\research\ in the Run box and click on OK. Alternatively you can map the network share to a drive letter by following the steps below

• Right click on "My Computer" and choose "Map Network Drive..."

• For "Drive" choose an available letter from the drop down list

• For "Folder" type “\\expo.campus.mcgill.ca\research" (no quotes)

• If you are not logged in to your computer with your domain account, click on "Connect using a different user name" and type in CAMPUS\DAS_username (e.g. CAMPUS\jdoe1) and your DAS password for credentials.

• Enable (checkmark) the "Reconnect at logon" option if you want this drive to appear next time you logon to your machine

• Click OK

• Click Finish

• If you now double-click on “My Computer” you will see the drive under “Network Drives”

Matlab

1. To install Matlab and authenticate through our license server follow the instructions above ("To obtain software distributed by the department").

2. To install Matlab locally (stand alone) without needing access to a license server follow the instructions from this article: Install MATLAB

What is the first step in creating my own web page on the ECE server?

You must create a directory called www - must be lowercase - directly under the root of your UNIX home directory

The link to your web page is http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~DASusername.

For the site to load automatically you must name your startup file one of the following names: index.html, index.htm, index.shtml

How to make it viewable by the world?

In order to have your site viewable by the world you must give 711 permissions to the www directory and all the html and image files below.

We suggest creating the following directories in order to keep your site organized:

html - for all your html files

images - for all your picture files

forms - if you want to use html/cgi forms

cgi-bin - for all your cgi/perl scripts

How to protect my directories?

Protecting your directories by means of .htaccess

In the directory /home/<yourusername> type in the following command:

htpasswd -c .htpasswd <USER>

Use for <USER> whatever user name you like and type in the password. This will create the file called .htpasswd that will contain your credentials. If you want to add other users, use the htpasswd without the -c switch, running htpasswd command with -c is going to rewrite the file if it already exists. To change tpassword for an existing user, simply issue the same command as when you added the user and to delete an user choose switch -D. For additional help how to use httpasswd, please find basic instructions at https://hostingcanada.org/htaccesstools-com-joins-hostingcanada-org.

Type chmod 644 .htpasswd

Create an .htaccess file in the directory you want protected - vi .htaccess

Type chmod 644 .htaccess

Put the following lines in it:

AuthUserFile /home/<yourusername>/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
Require valid-user

In the third line, starting with AuthName, "Restricted Area" can be replaced with whatever you may want to call your restricted group. Last line, starting with AuthType is for the usernames used above the .htpasswd file.

Regarding .htaccess file encoding, it is important to keep it saved with Unix encoding if it is prepared on Windows or Mac. Both files .htaccess and .htpasswd will be hidden files, therefore "Show Hidden Files" has to turned on if there is a need to work with them out of the terminal.

In case if you need to protect multiple directories, then you can create a different password file for each password directory (e.g. /home/yourusername/.htpasswd.another). For each protected directory .htaccess  file has to be created in directory that should be protected amd AuthuserFile lines in .htaccess file have to be modified with appropriate path to the .htaccess file.

Managing your ECE user webpage

Linux SSH:

• Connect via ssh to one of the Linux workstations: 156TRLinux.ece.mcgill.ca
• cd to the www directory (where the web pages are) and create files locally or use sftp to move pages up and down.

 

Samba:

• Mount your home drive through Samba (instructions under Linux system section of FAQ)

 

FTP:

To upload your website via FTP you will need to use an FTP client configured to connect using a secure (SSH) connection. Here is the information needed to connect:

• Host: 156TRLinux.ece.mcgill.ca
• Connection type: FTP over SSH
• Port: 22
• Username: firstname.lastname
• Password: your e-mail password
• Path to your webpage files: /home/DASusername/www

You can use FileZilla to upload your files. Once you download and install it, open FileZilla and click File > Site Manager. Select New Site > enter a descriptive name, and fill out the rest of the information on the General tab, as indicated above.

Once the connection is established you can transfer the files by dragging them into the Remote site pane. Your website's address will be http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~DASusername/

Note: the FTP process can be used for both course and user webpages (for course webpages you would use /home/infoXXX/www as the path to your webpage files)

Managing your Course Web Pages

Editing virtual (infoxxx) web pages

Samba:

To map your directory in samba please use the following information \\samba.ece.mcgill.ca\infoXXX, and then click on the use “different user name” and enter your short DAS name and your DAS (e-mail) password. Then click finish.

How do I login to the Windows Computers at the ECE facilities in the Trottier Building?

All registered ECE students have accounts on our systems; to login to a Windows machine simply use the following:

Username:

• Staff: firstname.lastname [at] mcgill.ca
• Students: firstname.lastname [at] mail.mcgill.ca
• Password: Your McGill Email Address Password

Graduate students have up to three network drives available. Once logged in with your domain account (first.last [at] mail.mcgill.ca) you should be able to see two network drives (M: and R:).

• The M: drive from ECE, which is your main Windows Storage. The actual path to the drive is \\Expo.campus.mcgill.ca\HOME3\ECE\Short_Username. The quota on this drive is currently 1 GB.
• The R: drive from IT Services, which you can use as your backup Windows Storage. The quota on this drive is currently 100 MB.
• Linux System -> How to mount your UNIX home directory on Windows (SAMBA). The quota on this drive is currently 10 GB.

Faculty and Staff

Faculty and Staff have up to three network drives available. Once logged in with your domain account (first.last [at] mcgill.ca) you should be able to see two network drives (M: and R:).

• The M: drive from ECE, which is your main Windows Storage. The actual path to the drive is \\Expo.campus.mcgill.ca\HOME1\ECE\Short_Username. The quota on this drive is currently 1 GB.
• Faculty and staff receive an R: drive from IT Services with 1GB of space for their personal use. For more information please see  File Storage and File Management.
• Linux System -> How to mount your UNIX home directory on Windows (SAMBA). The quota on this drive is currently 10 GB.

Manual Drive Mounting

If you do not see your network drives (M: & R:) mounted (or your PC is not part of the Campus.Mcgill.CA Domain), you can still mount the M: and R: drives manually:

M: Drive:

• Right click on "My Computer" and choose "Map Network Drive.."
• For "Drive" choose an available letter from the drop down list (i.e. M)
• For "Folder" type "\\Expo.campus.mcgill.ca\HOME1\ECE\YourShortUsername" (no quotes)
• Enable (checkmark) the "Reconnect at logon" if you want this drive to appear next time you logon to your machine
• Click on the "different user name" link
• For "User name" enter first.last [at] mcgill.ca (or first.last [at] mail.mcgill.ca)
• For "Password" entry your McGill e-mail password.
• Click OK
• Click Finish

R: Drive:

Using the same procedure as above, you can manually map the R: drive using this location \\file.campus.mcgill.ca\staff\group#\<ShortUserName>, where <ShortUserName> is your short username and where group# is the number found in the ReadMeFirst.htm file located on your R drive, or on Reggie View Account Information, Home Directory, and ShortUserName is your short username (eg. jsmith5)

Your drives should be mapped and available to you now.

 Faculty and staff get an R: drive from IT Services with 1GB of space for their personal use. For more information please see File Storage and File Management