TerpConnect Login Access

What is this Login Access?

Login access means that you are able to connect over the internet to a number of Solaris and/or Linux systems designated for general purpose access to members of the campus communities.

When you connect to these systems, you will get an Unix shell, from wish you can issue commands. In addition to allowing you to use standard Unix command line utilities, including the GNU compiler suite, there are a large number of added software applications that are available.

How do I get this access?

To access these systems you need to have a TerpConnect/Glue account. The username and password for this will be the same as your campus Directory ID and password, but it might need to be activated separately . If you are a student, it has probably already been activated automatically for you.

If you are not a member (faculty, currently registered student, or staff) of the University of Maryland, you might still be able to get a TerpConnect account if you are working with a faculty member who is willing to sponsor you as an affiliate.

How do I access the systems?

To access the cluster, you need to use the Secure Shell protocol (SSH). This is usually standardly installed as ssh on Unix systems, and clients are available for Windows, Mac, and even Android, however on non-Unix systems you typically must install an SSH client .

What is this "Unix" and how do I use it?

Unix is an old but venerable family of operating systems. Many (most?) of the servers that behind the scenes provide the infrastructure of the internet run Unix or Unix-like operating systems. And indeed the OS X operating systems that powers Macs is an Unix operating system.

Teaching someone how to use an Unix environment is beyond the scope of this webpage. However, we do have a very short list of the most basic Unix commands.

There are also many tutorials for beginning to use Unix on the web. A few are:

Terpconnect SSH Key Fingerprint

DSA key MD5 fingerprint: 12:ca:53:9a:b0:b9:b8:23:0b:8b:bd:b2:4d:15:ef:55
RSA key MD5 fingerprint: 9c:a6:09:a7:ae:ab:b5:b8:02:5c:28:3c:ad:bf:e6:30

This Unix stuff looks complicated. Can I access my storage without it?

Although the underlying storage is on Unix based systems, there are a number of alternative mechanisms for accessing the files.