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Connecting Via ssh

HPCC servers do not support direct logins or file transfers via telnet, rlogin, ftp , or rcp . All of these programs transmit passwords in the clear and have other vulnerabilities. Please login/transfer files using the Secure Shell protocol, which encrypts your entire login session. You must install a secure shell client on your local computer. We recommend the free programs putty/pscp/psftp for windows, openssh for unix/linux/Mac OS X, and Nifty Telnet SSH for Mac OS 9. A downloadable ssh client for MS-Windows is available from LabF.com and allows 30 minute sessions without registration. Another MS-Windows commercial ssh client is F-Secure SSH.

Please set SSH version 2 in your client programs. Either version 1 or 2 are now accepted, but soon only version 2 will be accepted by HPCC servers.

Using putty under Windows

To connect to HPCC servers using putty.exe from a Windows PC. To start putty.exe, click on the shortcut if you have one, or open a command window and type in putty. If the PC says PUTTY is not recognized .. , make sure that the executable putty.exe is located in a directory that is in the system path, or start it from the directory containing the executable. A gray window should open. We will give sample connection instructions for weland.hpcc.ttu.edu. Substitute weland.hpcc.ttu.edu with grendel.hpcc.ttu.edu or as needed.

On the first execution of putty ,enter weland.hpcc.ttu.edu under Host Name, click the SSH button under Protocol, enter session name under Saved Sessions, click the Save button under Saved Sessions, then click the SSH button under Category, which opens a new window Options controlling SSH connections. In this window click the 2 button under Preferred SSH protocol version, and click 3DES button under Encryption options. Now putty is set up, and you can click the Open button at the bottom of the window to start. On the first execution, it will open a black terminal window overlaid by a gray window PuTTY Security Alert which says The server's host key is not cached in the registry . This security warning will also come up after the server is rebooted. Normally it may be ignored, click the Yes button at the bottom of the window to start. Then enter your username and password in the black terminal window as with telnet.

If the black terminal window does not open, but a small gray window PuTTY Error says Unable to open connection to weland.hpcc.ttu.edu, then either weland.hpcc.ttu.edu is down or your pc does not properly resolve hostnames. In that case, restart putty, load your saved settings and replace the hostname weland.hpcc.ttu.edu with its numeric IP address 129.118.104.4 , then save the session and open the session. If that does not work, either weland.hpcc.ttu.edu or the network in between are down.

You may also use the putty file transfer programs pscp.exe and psftp.exe as a replacement for ftp. The programs are run from a PC command window. An example for downloading the weland file .login to your pc is

pscp guest@weland.hpcc.ttu.edu:/users/guest/.login .login

You will be prompted for your unix password, and replace guest with your actual username twice. For the clusters, also replace the home directory users with home.

For uploading the PC file mydata to weland, put the local file name before the remote file name:

pscp mydata guest@weland.hpcc.ttu.edu:/users/guest/mydata

For multiple uploads, the the any-file character *.* (PC) substituted for the source file name, and leave the destination file name blank:

pscp *.* guest@weland.hpcc.ttu.edu:/users/guest/

For multiple downloads, the the any-file character * (unix) can be substituted for the source file name, and leave the destination file name as ".":

pscp guest@weland.hpcc.ttu.edu:/users/guest/* .

To simplify uploading/downloading many files, you may want to archive the many files into one archive file. weland has both tar, the unix standard, and zip, the Windows standard, for creating/extracting archives. Most PC's do not have tar so zip is preferred. On weland, use zip my.zip *.c to create the archive, zip -T my.zip to test/show the archive, and unzip my.zip to extract the archive. On the PC, use pkzip or winzip to perform the same functions.

The psftp.exe program emulates unix sftp or ftp, so just open a command window, psftp weland.hpcc.ttu.edu , login with username and password, and use put or get to upload or download.

Some putty program options are not easily saved from the program. The options are stored in the PC registry. To change them permanently, start regedit in the section Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions. Some of the more useful options are Font, FontHeight, Protocol, SshProt, TerminalType, TermWidth with default values Courier, 10, telnet, 1, ansi, 80 and suggested values to your preference such as Lucinda Console, 10, ssh, 2, xterm, 132. The terminal type should match the value of the unix environment variable TERM.

Using Nifty Telnet SSH under Mac OS 9


Mac OS X includes openssh (see below). For Mac OS 9, we recomend Nifty Telnet SSH at niftytelnet.hqx or its home http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jonasw/freeware/niftyssh/. Detailed setup instructions are at UCI. For weland, use the hostname weland.hpcc.ttu.edu and the SSH-3DES protocol on the New Connection window. You may also set the terminal width, height, and emulation (defaults are 80, 24, and vt100). After logging in, you may need to set terminal type on the server (for csh/tcsh):

csh: setenv TERM vt100

bash: export TERM=vt100

(or other to match the Nifty Telnet setting).

Using openssh under Unix/Linux/Mac OS X


Many unix machines have ssh installed by default. Enter which ssh to see if it is in your path, and if it is, enter ssh -V to make sure it is version 2+ or supports protocol version 2. Openssh is updated often for security fixes, and you may download the latest source tar distributions for unix and linux systems at http://www.openssh.org. Generally for Unix/Linux client versions of openssh, you will also need the freeware libraries openssl, pam ,and zlib.

Compiled linux binaries are at your distribution site or at http://www.rpmfind.net.

Compiled Sun binaries are at http://www.sunfreeware.com.

The openssh distribution will include the file transfer program scp. Usage is similar to the Windows program pscp.exe