Creating your Beskar Account

For this course, you'll do your coding-type work on a computational physics workstation named Beskar. It lives on Prof. Beatty's desk. A piece of server software named JupyterHub runs on Beskar, and it lets you connect through a web browser and do all your work that way. Easy peasy!

Prof. Beatty should already have added you to the list of authorized users. All you need to do is to log in to it. The first time you do, you'll select your password.

Part A: Log Into Beskar

  1. Point your web browser to https://beskar.uncg.edu/.

    • That should take you to a "sign in" page.

  2. Enter your UNCG user ID for "Username". That's the part of your UNCG email address that precedes the @ symbol.

  3. Enter the password you wish to use with this acccount.

    • Whatever you enter the very first time will become your password, so type it very carefully.
    • Pick your password thoughtfully. Please please please PLEASE pick a secure one that's at least 8 characters (longer is better) and contains a mix of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, digits, and symbols.
    • Personally, I recommend just using your UNCG password. That will be easy for you to remember. (And it's encrypted on Beskar such that I have no way to view it. Promise.)

  4. Click the "Sign In" button.

That should take you to the main interface of JupyterLab, our coding environment.

If you run into any weird errors, such as "failure to spawn server" type things, contact Prof. Beatty ASAP. This step has been a little flaky during testing. 😬 I think I've got it fixed, but… 🤞

Part B: Welcome to JupyterLab

Feel free to explore the JupyterLab interface a bit, if you want. Or, forge ahead with the assignments.