HPRC:Access

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Access Using SSH

To connect to HPRC clusters, you must use SSH (Secure Shell). SSH is a client-server software that provides for secure (by encryption) logins and other communication between two hosts. SSH is freely available on the Internet for Linux/Unix and PC Windows (in the guise of MobaXterm).

To initiate SSH connection to target cluster's login node, find the hostname and credential (userID/password) info from Table 1 below. For example, connecting to Ada cluster from a terminal enter:

localhost$ ssh NetID@ada.tamu.edu

where the ada.tamu.edu address is a DNS round-robin alias for ada[1-8].tamu.edu. You will be prompted for your password in order to establish authentication. Once you login into one of the login nodes, the shell's prompt will be NetID.ada[1-8].

If, however, you are connecting for the very first time, you will see a message similar to the following, before arriving at the password prompt:

The authenticity of host 'ada (165.91.16.18)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:SfQPtDJW30sj4kG2c4KGFw7LcEduSOFeXGIlsf4WhEA.
ECDSA key fingerprint is MD5:9c:ea:ba:22:0f:6f:1e:b9:0c:21:d4:b6:70:0f:a0:d5.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? 

Type yes and you will then be presented with the password prompt.

Warning: Permanently added 'ada' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
NetID@ada.tamu.edu's password:

Table 1: Hostname and credential info of HPRC clusters

Cluster	Hostname	Number of login nodes	Credential (UserID / Password)
Ada	ada.tamu.edu	8 (ada1 ~ ada8)	NetID / NetID password
Eos	eos.tamu.edu	5 (eos1 ~ eos5)	Eos_ID / Eos password
Curie	curie.tamu.edu	2 (curie1 ~ curie2)	NetID / NetID password
Neumann	neumann.tamu.edu	4 (neumann1 ~ neumann4)	NetID / NetID password
Crick	crick.tamu.edu	1 (crick1)	NetID / NetID password

Access from Windows

Using MobaXterm (Recommended)

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MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal for Windows with a built-in X11 server, tabbed SSH client, built-in file editor, SFTP functionality, and other useful features. It is available from: http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download.html

You will need to choose which license (free Home edition, or professional) and then select the Portable or Installer edition. The Installer edition works best on your personal machine, when you have the privileges to install software. The portable version may be necessary when using a lab workstation, for example. (Be sure to check if MobaXterm is already installed in the Windows Start menu.)

After you have installed MobaXterm on your machine, open MobaXterm and start a local terminal:

From the local terminal, connect to the cluster using SSH:

Using PuTTY

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PuTTY is a full-featured, SSH v1.x, v2.x compliant client for Windows. You can get PuTTY as well as PSCP (a tool for encrypted remote file transfer) at: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

After installing PuTTY, open PuTTY to get a window similar to the following:

Enter the host name of the remote machine you want to connect to. In this case, we are attempting to connect to ada.tamu.edu at the TAMU Supercomputing Facility. The settings we are configuring for this connection can be saved as a session profile by PuTTY if we give this session a name and click on the "Save" button on this initial window. We have called this session "ada", but we will not yet save the profile since we still need to modify other parameters before we are ready to establish the connection.

Make sure the SSH parameters are correct. Click on SSH in the category tree (this is found under the "Connection" branch). Verify that the preferred SSH protocol version is "2 only" and the preferred encryption algorithm is AES.

Next, go to the "Auth" portion of the GUI and make sure that the settings are configured as follows:

Next, in the "Tunnels" window, enable X11 forwarding:

Since now we have configured all the parameters as we want them, we can go back to the sessions window and click on the "Save" button to save these settings under the session name of "ada".

To establish a connection to the cluster, we can now simply highlight the session and click on "Open." Finally, you should be presented with a window with a command line interface and will be asked to supply your login name and password:

Enter the proper credentials for the cluster you are connecting to.

NOTE: If this is the first time you are attempting to connect to the remote machine, PuTTY will warn you that it doesn't know the machine's public key and give you the option of continuing or not. Just click on "Yes". Once this is done, you won't see this message again for this machine unless the public key on the remote machine changes for some reason.

Access from MacOS

Using the Terminal Program

Find the Terminal program under Applications->Utilities.

On your Mac click the Finder icon to start finder:

1. Select Applications
2. Double click the Utilities folder
3. Double click the Terminal utility
4. A Terminal window will now appear.
5. Connect to the cluster using SSH.

Remote Display of Programs with Graphical Interfaces

The recommended X-Windows emulator for Mac OS X is Apple X11, which is available free from Apple.

1. After X11 is installed on your system, start Apple X11.
2. A xterm window should appear on your screen.
3. Login to a UNIX machine (example: ada.tamu.edu).

   ssh -X netID@ada.tamu.edu

   The -X option tells SSH to allow programs to forward and display their graphical interfaces. This is known as X11 forwarding.
4. To verify that X11 forwarding is working, type the following command:

   xterm

   If a new xterm terminal window for the remote system pops up, then X11 forwarding is working correctly.

Access from Linux/Unix

OpenSSH is an SSH v1.x and v2.x compliant SSH package that is available for many Linux and Unix operating systems and is " ...freely usable and re-usable by everyone under a BSD license... ". OpenSSH also includes secure copy (scp), which may be used instead of ftp. It is available from:

ftp://ftp.openssh.com/pub/OpenBSD/OpenSSH/portable/.

Using the Terminal

If you are using a UNIX based system (IRIX, Linux, SunOS, etc), open a terminal window and connect to the cluster using SSH.

Remote Display of Programs with Graphical Interfaces

Typically, if you use a graphical login screen to login a Linux or Unix system, then the system is already running a X11 server. You will need to login with SSH to the remote system in a slightly different manner:

ssh -X NetID@ada.tamu.edu

The -X option tells SSH to allow programs to forward and display their graphical interfaces. This is known as X11 forwarding. To verify that X11 forwarding is working, type the following command:

xterm

If a new xterm terminal window for the remote system pops up, then X11 forwarding is working correctly.

Off-campus Access

For connecting to cluster login nodes from outside the campus, you need to activate Virtual Private Network (VPN) first, then initiate SSH connection to the cluster login nodes. You can find VPN installation instructions from TAMU ServiceNow Knowledge Base page on VPN.