CS 332 Puma Accounts

Home | Course Information | Syllabus | Final Project | Documentation & Useful Links

In order to use a Linux workstation, you must have an account on puma, the CS department fileserver. If you have taken other computer science courses at Wellesley, you probably already have a puma account. If you have only taken CS111 or CS112, your account needs to be upgraded. To obtain a new account or upgrade an existing one, you need to fill out a form at the following website:

http://cs.wellesley.edu/user-info/

(Note that the addresses http://cs.wellesley.edu/ and http://puma.wellesley.edu/ are equivalent.) Select the link labeled appropriate forms on this page (these forms can only be accessed from on-campus) and then select the option registering for some other course or other reason in the list that appears. A new page will appear titled Puma Account Request. If you already have an account, then check the item near the top of this page that is labeled I already have an account, just list me in the class. You will then need to fill out the information in the rest of the form. This is also a chance to reset your account password if you have forgotten it or want to change it. If you do not have a puma account, select I don't have an account, please create one for me and fill out the rest of the information. You will need to enter a "magic word" as part of the form -- ask a CS instructor for this word.

If you have forgotten your password, go to the above web page, click on the appropriate forms link, and select the option You need your password reset.

Regardless of which Linux workstation you use, all files in your account are physically stored on the puma fileserver and not on the Linux workstation itself. For example, if you are user gdome, and you create a file named ~gdome/test.txt while working on the workstation named teddy, this file is actually stored on puma and not on teddy. You can later view, edit, or delete this file from any other CS department Linux machine.