Logging into HPC machines using Cygwin/X

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially released x86 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows CE.

Note that the official support for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me will be discontinued with the next major version (1.7.0) of Cygwin.

Attention: Cygwin may not be compatible with Windows Vista, especially when you are willing to use graphical interface. Try Xming as an alternative.

For more detailed information, please refer to Cygwin official website.

Download and Install Cygwin

1. Download Cygwin installer from its official website.

2. Run setup.exe, you will see the welcome screen:

3, Click Next to proceed to the next screen. Please choose "Install from Internet", this will still save the package files to your download directory so that you can install Cygwin on any number of machines.

4. Click Next to proceed to the next screen.

The default Install Root is c:\cygwin; this should be fine for most installations. Leave Default Text File Type as UNIX. If you have several users on your NT machine, and you are logged in with local administrative privileges, you may wish to set Install For to All, but the default of Just Me will work fine for single user machines.

5. Click Next to proceed to the next screen.

Local Package Directory should default to the directory that you ran setup.exe from:

6. Click Next to proceed to the next screen.

Choose your proxy setup, or, just choose Direct Connection to limit the scope of download problems:

7. Click Next to proceed to the next screen.

Select your nearest mirror for downloading:

8. Click Next to proceed to the next screen; setup will download a list of available packages as it moves to the next screen.

a) For normal text editor, you will probably use Emacs or Vim. Please select them under "Editors" option.

b) For SSH usage, please select "openssh" under "Net" option. Attention: SSH is not default installed in Cygwin.

c) For X-11, please select WHOLE "X11" option. You can change the "X11" status into "Install" by clicking the icon right to "X11" label.

9. Click Next to begin the download process, you may want to try another mirror if you see a "Connecting" message on this screen for a long period of time:

10. I highly recommend allowing Cygwin Setup to create Desktop and Start Menu icons for you; these icons simply launch a bash shell:

Start Cygwin

After installing Cygwin, you can easily start Cygwin by simply clicking the Cygwin icon:

Start X-Windows environment

1. After starting Cygwin terminal, you could type following command to start X-Windows environment:

$ sh /usr/X11R6/bin/startxwin.sh

2. If the Windows Security Alert dialog pops up, just click "OK" button.

3. If the X-Windows environment is properly installed and configured, you will see the following screen:

4. If you are on campus, you could log onto any Lehigh server by using SSH command "ssh". If you are off campus, please first log onto ssh.cc.lehigh.edu and from there you can jump to other machines easily.

Please remember, if you want to use graphical interface, please type "-X -l" option when you do the SSH command.

For example:

ssh -X -l username leaf.cc.lehigh.edu

5. After typing your password, you will probably successfully log onto the Lehigh machines with X-Windows support.

Other possible configuration, please refer to official guide.

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