(OLD) Class Server Instructions (ece‐reconfig‐host)

Server Login Instructions

Install PuTTY (or any other SSH client). If you are running MacOS or Linux, you can skip this step and just use SSH on the terminal. Alternatively, you can use Visual Studio code for SSH and file management. See the instructions below for setup instructions.

First, make sure you are on the UF network, e.g., connected using the UF VPN or being on the campus Wi-Fi network.

Using SSH, log into ece-reconfig-host.ad.ufl.edu using your UFL account. From a terminal:

ssh <account_name>@ece-reconfig-host.ad.ufl.edu

VNC Viewer Setup (GUI)

Install a VNC viewer on your local computer. Some options are RealVNC Viewer and TigerVNC Viewer. For RealVNC, you'll need to create an account and log in after installation. This can be any account, but it probably makes sense to use your UFL account.

Login to the server as instructed above, then run the following command: vncpasswd

This will ask you to create a password for your VNC session. You can ignore the “view-only” password.

Start an instance of vncserver by running the following command: vncserver

There will be a warning about vncserver being deprecated, but there shouldn’t be any errors. If there are, try to resolve them.

Make a note of the number appended to the hostname after the command completes, e.g., New 'ece-reconfig-host:5 (username)' desktop is ece-reconfig-host:5 where the number in question is 5 in this example.

Once the server is running, go back to your machine and open RealVNC Viewer. Navigate to File -> New Connection. Under VNC Server, put “ece-reconfig-host.ad.ufl.edu:5”. Make sure you use the number provided by the output of the vncserver command that you ran on the server. Give the server a “friendly name”, e.g., Reconfig2.

Double click the server you just created. Enter your vncserver password when prompted. You should now see a RedHat Desktop. Hit anything on your keyboard and it should bring up a login prompt. Enter your UFL password and you should be connected.

Click on Activities at the top left. This will open a panel with various apps. Select the terminal.

From the terminal, run source /apps/reconfig/enable_pro. You should now be able to open Questa, Vivado, and Quartus Prime Pro using the following:

quartus &
vivado &
vsim &

Make sure to include the “&” so you open each in the background. In some situations, we will be using Quartus Prime Standard (not pro). In that case, open a new terminal and run source /apps/reconfig/enable_std.

Visual Studio Code Setup

VS Code can used to connect to remote servers via SSH which allows you to edit files remotely as if they were local, and access a terminal shell. To enable this functionality, you must install the Remote-SSH extension. Follow the official documentation.

When you get to the 3rd step of the "Connect to a remote host" section, make sure to choose Linux as the type (since the class server is Linux-based).

Once connected, you can open a directory to edit files, etc. You can also open a Terminal pane from Terminal -> New Terminal or using the hotkey <Ctrl+`>