SPO600 students use a number of communication tools that have been built and heavily adopted by Open Source communities. This page contains set-up instructions for some of these communication tools.

To participate in the SPO600 course, you need to:

1. Create a blog (if you don't already have one) or create a tag/category for SPO600 if you're going to use an existing blog. Collect this information:
   • The URL of your main public blog page (Important: if you're using a tagged portion of an existing blog, find the URL for the tagged index page – just the posts that are relevant to SPO600)
2. Create an SSH key pair.
3. Fill in this form to send this information to your professor.

Instructions on how to do these things is detailed below.

A blog (short for weblog) is a (usually personal) website where dated articles are posted over a period of time. In the open source community, blogs are used to announce new projects, project releases, and general information, to comment on current happenings, to record personal reflections, and to comment on other people's blog postings.

There are many free or inexpensive blog hosting services available (including Blogger.com and Wordpress.com). Alternatively, you can host your own blog using blog software (caution! - it's a lot more work to host your own blog!).

See the Open Source@Seneca Blog Guidelines for information about setting up your blog and including your postings in Telescope.

In this course, all coursework except for quizzes is submitted by blogging. Therefore, it is important to write blog posts frequently (at least 2x per week), with good content, writing, and links.

Important: Some blog layouts / templates make it difficult to see all of the available posts. Make sure that your blog layout makes it easy for your professor to find all of your posts.

SSH is a tool that provides remote access to a computer system. This can include command-line access, but also file transfers, graphical user interface (GUI) access, and secure tunnels to remote services.

You need to send an SSH key to your professor to gain access to the class servers.

These instructions assume a Linux, Windows 10/11, or Mac OS/X system running OpenSSH. Other SSH clients will have different procedures, and you'll need to check that the key produced is in OpenSSH format (you can convert key types using the ssh-keygen command on a Linux system such as Matrix if needed).}}

1. Enter this command: ssh-keygen -t ed25519
   • Answer the questions asked by ssh-keygen. Use default values for most questions.
     • The use of a passphrase is strongly recommended. Avoid changing the filename from the default (unless there is a really good reason), because the location, name, and permission of keys is critical. DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSPHRASE!
   • ssh-keygen will produce two files; the name will be the same but the location will vary according to the operating system in use:
     • ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 - your private key - do not let anyone else have this file
     • ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub - your public key - this file can be freely shared with anyone
   • The permissions on these files matter! Take this in to account if you move these files or copy them between systems:
     • ~/.ssh directory must have permission 0700 (rwx——)
     • ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 must have permission 0600 (rw——-)
     • ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub should have permission 0644 (rw-r–r–)

ssh-keygen can generate multiple types of keys, including rsa, dsa, ecdsa, and ed25519. The best current advice is to use the ed25519 eliptic curve option, as is considered the most secure format supported by the current OpenSSH implementation (9.0 as of the time of writing).

Once you have the blog feed and public key ready, enter them on the Blog and SSH Information Form.

If you need to update your SSH key, you can do so by logging in to your SPO600 account(s).

If you do not have access to your account, you can ask another student to help you (remember that you all have sudo capability), or you may send an email to your professor, with the subject line “SPO600 SSH Key”. Attach a copy of your updated SSH public key named yourUserId.pub

Warning: Sending a new SSH public key to your professor will invalidate your previous key.

When communicating with your professor by email, please use your Seneca-provided e-mail address as the “From:” address (yourUserID@myseneca.ca). Because your professor receives a huge amount of email, it's crucial to include your course code (SPO600) in the subject line of each of your messages.

Each open source community uses some combination of email, IRC, blogs, wiki, and bug-tracking systems to facilitate communication. Learn the tools used by the communities you are interacting with, and communicate with their preferred tools.