How is access to CS computing resources controlled? Any student who needs access to CS computing resources must be in one of the ITS Active Directory groups that allow access. The groups are seeded at the beginning of each semester, so students who enroll in a course after that period may not be in the appropriate groups. Other than that, your VandalWeb credentials can be used to access CS computers and services.

How do I get added to the CS group(s)? If you are sure that your VandalWeb credentials are good, send an email to the CS Help Desk and we will make sure that you are added to the correct group or groups, upon verification of enrollment.

What if I've forgotten my password? You must take a photo ID and go to the ITS Help Desk in the Commons to have it reset.

Why do I get a Security Error when trying to access the Forums or log on to the Wiki? To save an annual fee and registration, our department serves as its own Root Certificate Authority (CA) and our web site certificate is self-signed (using our Root CA). Browsers check certificates against a known list of approved Root CAs and ours is not included in the default list. You may add a security exception for our site or, if you would like the Root CA to add to your default list, please write the CS Help Desk.

How do I connect from off-campus? The course servers provide ssh access to students from off-campus through VPN only. To connect please download the Cisco VPN client by following the instructions at the ITS Support Website. After connecting with the VPN an ssh client is required. Mac OS X and Linux both have native ssh clients. The recommended Windows ssh client is PuTTy, which is available here. If you are runnning an updated version of Windows 10, it now has a builtin SSH client that can be accessed from the Windows Command Prompt. Proper use of ssh is not covered here, but known problems or issues are covered in more detail in the Issues/Troubleshooting Section.

How do I change my password? You should use the password change feature on ITS support site (login required).

Why does my connection keep getting dropped? This comes up often enough each semester to warrant its own link here. Basically, your ISP is likely timing out your connection due to inactivity. If you use PuTTy on Windows, some more information that may help is here, in the Issues/Troubleshooting Section.

I've accidentally deleted one of my files, what do I do? Backups are performed each morning starting at 3:00 a.m. and, if your files were picked up on a nightly backup, we can restore them. Send an email to cshelp@uidaho.edu listing which files from which dates you need restored and we'll do our best to recover them for you. Please make sure to make additional backups of your own files as well to ensure optimal recovery time and accuracy.