Course accounts will be on the AITS (Academic Information Technology Services) Unix cluster. These accounts will exist only through the Fall 1997 semester and then will be deleted (on December 25, 1997). You are strongly advised to get a WAM (Workstations At Maryland) account, in addition to your course account, which will provide a permanent computer account and also allow you to log in to campus computers by telephone/modem connections.
Computer accounts will be distributed the first day of class: you will get a login name, a password (which you should change as soon as possible!), and some basic information.
First things to do, even before getting your computer account:
For those not already familiar with computing in a Unix environment:once you've gotten your course account, log in and execute the 'learn' command, and go through the 'files' course. If you're planning to learn to work within Unix on your own, I'd recommend you then go through the 'editor', 'vi', and 'morefiles' courses (you won't need macros, eqn, or C for this course); as an alternative or in addition to this, I strongly recommend you take the 3-hour Introduction to Unix offered by the AITS Peer Training Program.