Harris Instructions

You've been given an account on a phonetics lab server, harris.sas.upenn.edu. You should know how to open a terminal window on your laptop, and how to log in to harris via

ssh -Y $harrisip

(The physical machine is now located in a non-standard Penn building, due to the pandemic, and so the symbolic address harris.sas.upenn.edu doesn't work, and you'll need to use the literal IP address for all interactions with harris. The current IP address is 128.91.137.253)

The native terminal app on Mac OSX machines will work. To be sure that you have some other relevant things available, be sure that you've installed Xcode.

If you're using a Windows 10 or Windows 11 machine, the bash application of Windows Subsystem for Linux is the best thing to use, both for a terminal application and for other reasons.. For earlier editions of Windows, you can use Putty or SecureCRT. You'll also probably want an X11 server -- VcXsrv, Xming, MobaXterm, or X410.

You'll get an initial password sent via a secure channel, which you'll want to change. You should also set up public-key authentication, if you haven't already done so.

If you have any trouble with any of this, ask someone.

What

Harris runs a version of Unix, which has become the world's most common computer operating system. It's the underlying system for Apple's OS X, and Windows 10 now offers Windows Subsystem for Linux as an easy-to-install overlay.

"Linux" is a version of Unix named for its initial developer, Linus Torvalds. Harris runs the Ubuntu Linux distribution, one of many current distributions.

You'll be using harris.sas.upenn.edu for several things, primarily

  1. Accessing datasets of interest
  2. Running programs such as pitch tracking and forced alignment

Where

In the directory /plab on harris, there are more than 100 datasets from earlier editions of this course, and from projects by lab members. We'll probably add some more this semester.

How

There are many linux tutorials Out There, for example this one. You'll get basic instructions on the unix command line in class, but spending an hour or so with a tutorial will be useful if you're not already conversant.

Later on, you'll learn specific skills, such as how to do forced alignment (of audio recordings and texts), how to create scripts for efficient interactive phonetic annotation, and so on.

 

[This page will be expanded and updated as needed for subsequent assignments.]