Remote Access to Cosmos from Windows

I have just spent some time trying PuTTY and was able to make it work. Hopefully these instructions will allow you to access COSMOS from your laptop over the web.

I found the following site at Cornell quite helpful:

http://www2.cit.cornell.edu/services/systems_support/fileputty.html

You will need to download two files (free) from the PuTTY website at

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Download the first instance each of putty.exe and pscp.exe to your computer. The download just puts a copy an executable on your computer and does nothing fancy in the way of install. I suggest you create a new subdirectory in your Program Files directory and stick both execuatables in there. Create a shortcut to putty.exe and put it on your desktop if you wish.

Putty.exe is easy to run. Double click and type cosmos.colorado.edu in the box. It will open a terminal window. You type in your name and password. While typing the password the screen may appear dead, but type it out anyway and hit return. You should then be operate on cosmos, although it won't do graphics.

Moving a file to cosmos is more difficult. But this is going to be necessary for submitting homework if you don't want to do it by hand from the cosmos lab. As on the Cornell website, hit START, then RUN, then type "cmd" to open a command window to your laptop. I found myself in a directory called c:\ Documents and Settings\cash. Put a copy of pcsp.exe in that directory. You can also put the files you want to transfer into that directory to avoid extra typing on the command line.

Then, from the command box type:

pscp.exe c:\my_idl_procedure.pro wcash@cosmos.colorado.edu:my_idl_procedure.pro

(Obviously, change the file and user name.)

The program will query you for login information. When answered, it will copy the file to cosmos.

Good luck.