Getting started at EPITA on Welcome to EPITA

Introduction

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to EPITA#

Welcome to EPITA! The school has numerous digital tools that you will use throughout your studies.

Before starting, know how IT is organized at EPITA — it trips up a lot of students. Two separate services manage it: the Information Technologies Department of the IONIS group (formely known as the Bocal), and the Forge.

IONIS IT department manages the common services for all schools in the IONIS group, including Microsoft 365 accounts, school Wi-Fi (or more generally networking), door access control, and video surveillance. As students, you will never interact with this IT department directly because it does not provide direct support to students. In case of a problem, you must contact the designated contacts at the school based on the nature of the issue.

Microsoft account (IONIS)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is the IONIS account?#

The IONIS account (also known as the Bocal account) gives you access to all tools shared across IONIS group schools:

Microsoft 365
EPITA mailbox
School Wi-Fi
Auriga (planning, grades, syllabus, etc)
Zeus (old planning tool, can be used as a fallback for Auriga)

Receiving your credentials#

The login credentials for this account are sent to you via SMS at enrollment (or by email if you do not have a French mobile phone number yet). The SMS is sent by EPITA, the email is sent by noreply@console.bocal.org and has the title “Console BOCAL EPITA PASSWORD”.

Setting up your Forge password

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is the Forge account?#

The Forge account allows you to access the tools specific to EPITA. Your Forge credentials allow you to connect:

To the computers of the computer rooms
To the intranet of projects
To Moodle
To GitLab
To the news
And many others

Setting your password#

When you arrive at school, you do not have a predefined password on your Forge account. You must set it yourself by following this procedure:

Logging in to a school computer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Computer rooms#

EPITA is equipped with computer rooms commonly referred to as machine rooms on all its sites. The Forge guarantees the proper functioning of computers.

At the Kremlin-Bicêtre and Villejuif sites, machine rooms are accessible 24/7. We do our best to ensure that a maximum number of workstations work properly, so we ask you to respect certain rules to not harm our work:

Do not eat
Do not drink anything other than water from an empty bottle
Do not damage equipment: if the material degrades, we do not replace it before the following semester or next year
Do not disconnect any cables (power, RJ45, HDMI, etc.)
You have the right to bring your keyboard and/or mouse, but only to plug them into free USB ports

Finally, in order to respect your classmates and instructors, it is mandatory to have proper hygiene. The computer rooms tend to end up smelly quite fast…

The i3 window manager

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

i3 is a tiling window manager used in the EPITA computer rooms. It works very differently from the desktop environments you may be used to (Windows, macOS).

In a traditional desktop, windows float freely and you drag them around with the mouse. In i3, windows are automatically arranged to fill the screen without overlapping. Open one window and it takes up the entire screen. Open a second and the screen splits in two. Open a third and it splits again. Every pixel of screen space is used.

Linux basics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The school computers run Linux. This section covers the minimum you need to get around on the command line.

Warning: Most Linux commands execute immediately without asking for confirmation. A mistyped rm command can permanently delete files with no way to recover them. Read commands carefully before pressing Enter.

The filesystem layout#

Linux organizes all files in a single directory tree rooted at /. There are no drive letters — everything starts from the same root.

Text editors: vim and emacs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The EPITA computer rooms are equipped with two command-line text editors: Vim and Emacs. You will use them throughout the year to write and edit code. Both work very differently from anything you have likely used before, but a handful of commands is enough to be productive.

Vim#

Vim is launched from the terminal only. Open a terminal (Mod + Enter) and type:

vim filename.c

Modes#

Vim is a modal editor: the keyboard has two completely different behaviors depending on the current mode.

Submitting your first assignment

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Project submissions at EPITA are done via Git on the Forge. Completing this step unlocks your first achievement on the Forge intranet.

What is Git?#

Git is a version control system: it records the history of changes made to files in a project. Each snapshot of your work is called a commit and is stored in a repository.

A key point that trips up many beginners: committing and pushing are two separate operations. When you create a commit, it is saved only in your local repository. Nobody else can see it. To share your work, you must explicitly push your commits to the remote repository hosted on the Forge. The graders only ever see what has been pushed, so a commit that stays local is as if it were never done.