Guide to the Unix Lab

Department of Computer Science (COS)
Computing Facilities

The Computer Science Department maintains a computer lab for the exclusive use of their upper level students in 103 Science, on the Portland Campus. In addition to this lab the USM Microcomputer Labs and University System computers are available to CS, and all other University students.

Servers and Network Backbone

The CS Lab machines are primarily served by a Sun Solaris 9 server with a RAID disk array for file storage (approximately 1TB of storage). Web, Mail, and external services services are provided by a Linux server that accesses the "back end" data array over a high speed network.

The CS Servers and Lab are connected to the University network via high-speed Ethernet (100Mbps -- 1Gbps). The University network is connected to the rest of the University system and the Internet through several redundant T3 connections.

The CS Lab

The CS Lab is home to 6 SunBlade workstations running the Solaris 9 operating system. Each has a local suite of development applications in addition to many tools mounted from the central server.

The CS Lab also contains 10 intel-based GNU/RedHat Linux workstations that also utilize the central file services. A complete installation of RedHat Linux 9 is available on these workstations as well as third party development tools (NetBeans and Java).

We use the Gnome Desktop and Java development tools on both the Sun and Linux machines for maximum cross-platform compatibility.

GUI Lab

The GUI Lab has been merged with the CS UNIX Lab. It contains 15 Windows2000 workstations. Microsoft VisualStudio, and Sun Forte are the primary development tools available. They are designed for Graphical User Interface (GUI) design and implementation tasks, thus other graphical tools are also available. XWin32 is installed to allow access to the UNIX computers. These workstations also use the services of the department's central file server for user data storage.

University of Southern Maine Microcomputer Labs

The University maintains library-style computer labs on both the Portland and Gorham campuses that are available to CS and other students. These labs have a variety of Microsoft Windows and Macintosh computers available for use. Both campuses combined accounts for over 200 workstations available for student use. A full suite of development, business, scientific, and research applications are available. More information on these labs can be found on the Microcomputer Lab web site.

University System Facilities

The University of Southern Maine is one of seven campuses of the University of Maine System.The University System's central computing office, University Networking and Educational Technology (UNET) offers many services to USM students, including web-based email and mainframe computing resources.