Working on the server

Published

January 14, 2025

Our course server, stella.northeastern.edu is an Ubuntu machine. The following instructions will help you set up and use Rstudio, VSCode, or Jupyter Notebooks to work on the server and access the data.

Data

All data for the course will be in the

/data/CUS

folder. You will have permissions to access the data but not to write on that directory. If that is needed, please get in touch with the instructors.

Home Directory

You can write your scripts, other data, and final analysis and plots in your home director,y which will be

/home/student1

Your home directory contains the folder labs where you can find the Quarto notebooks for each of the labs.

Coding

Using Rstudio

You can work on the server using RStudio Server. Open a browser on your local machine and navigate to:

http://stella.northeastern.edu:8787
  • Your login and password are the same as your credentials to access the server
  • You will we working from your home directory in the server. You can export the final analysis and plot using the “Files” tab or use a SFTP tool to connect to your account in stella

Example of connection to the RStudio Server at stella

Using Visual Studio Code

  1. Verify that you can connect to stella using SSH by running the following command from a terminal in your computer. Change the studentX login as appropriate.
ssh studentX@stella.northeastern.edu

  1. Optional: While password-based authentication to access stella using SSH is supported, we recommend setting up key base authentication for stella. See the Tips and Tricks at the VSCode homepage.

  2. Open vscode and click on the Extensions panel button. Install the Remote - SSH extension

  3. In vscode select Remote-SSH: Connect to Host.. or use the **Remote Explorer* on the left sidebar

  4. Add a new connection using the same studentX@stella.northeastern.edu as in step 1.

  5. After a moment, VS Code will connect to the SSH server and set itself up.

  6. Once connected, you will see an empty window. Open any folder or workspace in the remote machine using the usual File menu.

See more instructions in the VS Code Remote Development using SSH page

Example of connection to stella using VSCode

Using Jupyter Notebooks

JupyterLab is available in stella. Open a browser window and navigate to

https://stella.northeastern.edu:8000
  • Again, your login and password are the same as your server access credentials.
  • You will be working from your home directory on the server.

Example of connection to stella using JupyterLab