Your account on these machines is otherwise separate from CSLab, and most importantly, your home directory is not backed up. All files should be stored on a CSLab machine for safe-keeping.
To make this easier, you can mount your CSLab home directory via "samba". Type this into a terminal window, replacing "user" by your logname (e.g. mine is "flaps"):
mount /home/cs/user
This will prompt you for your CSLab password. After this command succeeds, the directory /home/cs/user will be a samba mount of your CSLab home directory.
Note that the samba protocol does not include unix file permissions. As you will see, the unix file permissions are faked on the local machine. To view or change file permissions, log in to a CSLab machine (such as apps0.cs.toronto.edu) with "ssh".
Of course you can simply log in to a CSLab machine to do your work in the first place. Since these workstations are running X Windows, you can even run X Windows clients on the CSLab machine, displaying over the network on the local machine.
The filesystem "mount" will persist until the machine is shut down or rebooted, or the filesystem is manually unmounted. To unmount your CS home directory, type
umount /home/cs/user(note that it's spelled "umount", not "unmount")
On another note, to log in to these machines remotely, you need to log in first to a publicly-accessible machine inside CS (e.g. apps0.cs.toronto.edu). From there, you can log in to one of these machines using the full name "machinename.isl.sandbox". For example, "ssh tox.isl.sandbox". But a few of them are on the red network instead; e.g. "ssh tao.red.sandbox".
Any questions, please ask (preferably by e-mail).