Moving files to remote server using SCP

Feel free to come to office hours if you’re new to using command line!

0 - Make sure you connect to a UB network

CSE department server turing.cse.buffalo.edu is accessible only from the UB campus. Go to next section if you are on campus or living in dorms.

If you are off campus, you will need to use the UB VPN. You can also use cerf.cse.buffalo.edu. If you are using cerf, replace turing with cerf in the following commands.

1 - Open a terminal

For Linux/Mac users, use the Terminal.app or any other terminal emulator you have.

For Windows users, you may want to use PowerShell. To set up PowerShell to use scp, you need to install OpenSSH, see this tutorial for details. To connect to the CSE server, you only need to install the OpenSSH client feature.

2 - Locate the directory where your template files are

Once you have downloaded the template files, use command cd to navigate to the parent directory of the folder where the template codes are located, and use command ls to check if the current directory contains your folder. For example, if the files are located in the folder HW0C++, it would look like this:

vincent@local_machine ~ % cd Downloads/331
vincent@local_machine 331 % ls
HW0C++
vincent@local_machine 331 % ls HW0C++
Driver.cpp  HW0Utility.h  outputs  Solution.cpp  testcases  Utility.h
vincent@local_machine 331 %

Check out the link if you are not familiar with basic commands.

3 - Transfer files to the remote server

To transfer files to the remote server, use command scp. For example, my UBIT name is vc331 and I want to transfer the folder HW0C++ to the remote server. The command would look like this:

vincent@local_machine 331 % scp -r HW0C++ vc331@turing.cse.buffalo.edu:~
vc331@turing.cse.buffalo.edu's password:
Solution.cpp                   100%  884    37.6KB/s   00:00
input5.txt                     100%   25KB 555.2KB/s   00:00
input1.txt                     100%  250    10.9KB/s   00:00
input2.txt                     100%  501    20.0KB/s   00:00
Utility.h                      100%  159     6.7KB/s   00:00
Driver.cpp                     100%  653    30.5KB/s   00:00
output5.txt                    100%   36KB 504.6KB/s   00:00
output1.txt                    100%  318    13.1KB/s   00:00
output2.txt                    100%  728    31.0KB/s   00:00
HW0Utility.h                   100%  647    29.3KB/s   00:00
vincent@local_machine 331 %

Terminal will prompt you to enter your password, you won’t see the password as you type it.

4 - SSH into the remote server

Now you can login to the server using command ssh. It is better to keep your current terminal tab open for file transfer and open an additional tab for ssh and test your implementation on the turing server. For example, my UBIT name is vc331, the command would look like this:

vincent@local_machine 331 % ssh vc331@turing.cse.buffalo.edu
vc331@turing.cse.buffalo.edu's password:
vc331@turing:~$

To check if the files have been successfully transferred, use command ls to list the folders and files in the current directory. You should see the folder HW0C++ in the list:

vc331@turing:~$ ls
HW0C++ HW0Java HW0Python
vc331@turing:~$

5 - Compile and run your code

To run your code, navigate to the directory where your code is located and compile it. To compile and run your code on input1.txt, you can use the following commands, depending on the language you are using:

vc331@turing:~$ cd HW0C++
vc331@turing:~/HW0C++$ g++ -std=c++11 Driver.cpp
vc331@turing:~/HW0C++$ ./a.out testcases/input1.txt

vc331@turing:~$ cd HW0Java
vc331@turing:~/HW0Java$ javac src/ub/cse/algo/*.java
vc331@turing:~/HW0Java$ java -cp "src" ub.cse.algo.Driver testcases/input1.txt

vc331@turing:~$ cd HW0Python
vc331@turing:~/HW0Python$ python Driver.py testcases/input1.txt

Compare your output with outputs/output1.txt to see if your code is correct, and test your code with other test cases.