Text-mode access using OpenSSH¶
Prerequisite: OpenSSH¶
You will need a public/private key pair to request and account, this key pair has to be used to authenticate when making a connection. For information on how to create a key pair, see the page on generating keys.
How to connect?¶
In many cases, a text mode connection to one of the VSC clusters is sufficient. To make such a connection, the ssh command is used:
$ ssh <vsc-account>@<vsc-loginnode>
Here,
<vsc-account>
is your VSC username that you have received by mail after your request was approved, e.g.,vsc98765
, and<vsc-loginnode>
is the name of the login node of the VSC cluster you want to connect to, e.g.,login.hpc.kuleuven.be
.
You can find the names of the login nodes for the various clusters in the sections on the available hardware.
Note
The first time you make a connection to a login node, you will be prompted to verify the authenticity of the login node, e.g.,
$ ssh vsc98765@login.hpc.kuleuven.be
The authenticity of host 'login.hpc.kuleuven.be (134.58.8.192)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is b7:66:42:23:5c:d9:43:e8:b8:48:6f:2c:70:de:02:eb.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?
How to connect with support for graphics?¶
On most clusters, we support a number of programs that have a GUI mode
or display graphics otherwise through the X system. To be able to
display the output of such a program on the screen of your Linux
machine, you need to tell ssh to forward X traffic from the cluster to
your Linux desktop/laptop by specifying the -X
option. There is also
an option -x
to disable such traffic, depending on the default options
on your system as specified in /etc/ssh/ssh_config
, or ~/.ssh/config
.
Example:
$ ssh -X vsc98765@login.hpc.kuleuven.be
To test the connection, you can try to start a simple X program on the
login nodes, e.g., xeyes
. The latter will open a new
window with a pair of eyes. The pupils of these eyes should follow your
mouse pointer around. Close the program by typing \”ctrl+c": the
window should disappear.
If you get the error ‘DISPLAY is not set’, you did not correctly enable the X-Forwarding.
How to configure the OpenSSH client?¶
The ~/.ssh/config
file can be used to configure your SSH connections, e.g.,
to automatically add X forwarding or specify the path of a key that is not in
the default location. We provide some useful tips.
Troubleshooting OpenSSH connection issues¶
When contacting support regarding connection issues, it saves time if you
provide the verbose output of the ssh
command. This can be obtained by
adding the -vvv
option for maximal verbosity.
If you get a Permission denied
error message, one of the things to verify
is that your private key is in the default location, i.e., the output of
ls ~/.ssh
should show a file named id_rsa_vsc
.
The second thing to check is that your private key is linked to your
VSC-id in your SSH configuration file at ~/.ssh/config
.
If your private key is not stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa_vsc
, you need to adapt
the path to it in your ~/.ssh/config
file.
Alternatively, you can provide the path as an option to the ssh
command when
making the connection:
$ ssh -i <path-to-your-private-key-file> <vsc-account>@<vsc-loginnode>