ECE 558/658 VLSI Design Principles
How to use Cygwin from ECS Windows machines

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§ Cygwin, a Linux-like environment for Windows, is available on all ECS Windows machines. It allows users of Windows machines to connect to remote Unix computers, run X applications and shows X applications running on the remote Unix computer at your Windows desktops.

§ How to use Cygwin from ECS Windows machines?

1 Run “Cygwin bash shell” from “Start->Programs->Cygwin”

2 If you can see this window, type “startx” at the command line. The “startx” command enables an X-server on a Microsoft Windows machine. If you want to know more about the X-server, visit Wikipedia.

3 Check the X-server is enabled.



After run “startx” command, there is another window. It is an X-terminal.

4 Now you can connect sloth.ecs.umass.edu that is a Solaris machine and has CAD tools from Cadence and Synopsys.
Type “ssh username@sloth” at the command line.



sloth.ecs.umass.edu will ask you to type your ECS password.

5 To check the remote X-application is working or not, you can try Emacs, which is one of the most famous editors in Linux computing system.
Type “emacs&” in the command line.




If you can see the Emacs window, your X-sever running on your MS Windows machine is fine, and you can run any X-application from sloth.ecs.umass.edu.
If you get error messages from the X-terminal, contact ECS with those error messages.

6 If you want to log-out from sloth.ecs.umass.edu, close all X-application windows and type “exit” in the X-terminal.
The “exit” command will disconnect you from sloth.ecs.umass.edu.

If you have problems contact the Teaching Assistant. In addition we are always looking to improve these web pages and tools. If you have suggestions and improvements to the web pages or tools please submit them to your TA. She/he will make sure the improvements are implemented.