Logging in
Introduction
Access to the systems is via a text terminal in which the program ssh
can be run. If you are on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) no additional software should be required. On Windows you can also use PuTTY or, particularly if you wish to start graphical applications, MobaXterm. To transfer data to and from the systems, scp
or rsync
are available on Linux and Mac OS X. Windows users can try WinSCP or another SCP client. Under both Windows and OSX Cyberduck can be used.
SSH
Access is only available via secure methods such as SSH and SCP.
Please note that the following will only work within the FU network. If you are outside the network, you need to set up a VPN connection (in German).To connect to the HPC systems, the following command is used:
$ ssh <username>@curta.zedat.fu-berlin.de
e.g.
$ ssh schmidt@curta.zedat.fu-berlin.de
You will then be asked for the password for your FU account. If you have any problems with this and want to contact us, please never send us your password.
If you want to start a program on the remote system which opens a window on your Linux computer under X, use the option -X
. This also works on Mac OS X, but from Version 10.8 on the package XQuartz must be installed first.
VNC
If you need access to a complete desktop on the HPC system, then it is possible to start a VNC session. For this you will need a VNC client, such as TigerVNC. First log into the HPC system as described above. You then need to set a VNC password via the command
$ vncpasswd
This needs to be done only once.
After that, start the VNC server on the HPC system:
$ vncsever
This needs to be done once. You will only need to repeat this step if the login node of the HPC system is rebooted, which normally does not happen very often. This command will return the name of the login node and a port number, e.g.
login.curta.zedat.fu-berlin:42
Finally, start a VNC client on your local computer and enter the the information above together with the VNC password you defined earlier.
If you accidentally start more than one server this will show up in the list of servers:
$ vncserver -list
TigerVNC server sessions:
X DISPLAY # PROCESS ID
:28 52343
:9 37728
You can then terminate the server you do not need, e.g.
$ vncserver -kill :9