• You can create or renew your CS account by going to the CS Dept home page and clicking on “Account Creation” in the “Computer Science Resources” area.

• You may need to wait until you have been registered for at least 24 hours before you can create an account. (It takes that long for the information to get to us.)

• If it was a recent semester, there is a good chance that it is still there. Try confirming to be sure.

• If it was long enough ago to have been removed from the system, go to the CS Dept home page and click on “Account Creation” in the “Computer Science Resources” area.

Once you have your account set up, you should wait 24 hours, then confirm that you account works by logging in to the CS Virtual Computer Lab or by connecting to the CS VPN, then using SSH to log in to one of the CS Linux servers at linux.cs.odu.edu.

1. You may have simply typed your login/user name or password incorrectly. Use your browser’s Back-up and Refresh buttons to try again.

   • Take note that, on our system, all student login names begin with “cs_” and contain no upper-case letters.
   • Also, when logging in to the course website or to one of the Linux servers, you do not put “CS\” in front of your login name, as you might do to log in to a CS Dept Windows PC.
   • Similarly, do not add @odu.edu or any other portion of an email address to your login name.

2. If you are registered for a CS Dept course but do not yet have a CS account, follow the instructions above to request up your account.

   • Is your Unix account active? The easiest way to check is to try logging in to to the CS VPN and then to one of our Linux machines or to use Remote Desktop to connect to our Windows Virtual Computer Lab.

3. If you are able to log in to a CS Dept machine but not to the protected content on this course website,

   1. Have you waited at least 24 hours before trying to access protected content on the course website?

      After your account has been activated, your new login name needs to be written into the course enrollment records before my course website will become aware of it. That process takes place overnight.

   2. Are you really, really sure that you entered your login name and password correctly? These are taken directly from the same database used to authenticate your logins to the CS Dept Linux and Windows machines, so it is unlikely that they would be out of sync.

4. If you have forgotten your password, you should contact the CS Dept systems staff to have your password reset:

   • Go to the CS Dept home page and click the “Password Reset” link (under “Computer Science Resources”).

5. If you are unable to log in to either the Virtual Computer lab or to the Linux servers, you will need to contact the CS Systems staff to resolve your problems.

   • If you are unable to log in to those services, you will almost certainly be unable to log in to the course website as well.