elvis@polimi ~ $

How-to connect to the internal server

This is a short guide to add students to the local machine. It has a first part that is meant to be followed by students. Then, the second part is a remainder for who creates the account.

User Access

To access to our computation machine, you need either to connect using an ethernet cable or to access through the polimi VPN. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that creates a secure, encrypted connection between your device and an internal network.

Estabilish the VPN connection [optional]

After being enabled to use the VPN service, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Open the VPN settings from, e.g. on GNOME desktop environment follow these steps: vpn_settings1
  2. Add a vpn “Multi-protocol VPN client”. NOTE: if you don’t have that option you need to install the following packages: network-manager-openconnect network-manager-openconnect-gnome
  3. In the identity tab add only the following options:
    1. set VPN Protocol to Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect
    2. set Gateway to https://gp-deib-saml.vpn.polimi.it/gateway:prelogin-cookie
  4. Follow direction to connet and login using the 2-Factor-Authentications

Configure an ssh configuration file

Create the ~/.ssh/config file if not existent. Append the following lines:

Host <name>
        HostName <ip_address>
        User <username>
        PreferredAuthentications publickey,password
        ForwardAgent yes

Please, replace the following tokens with the required machine information:

  • <name>: the name of the server, can be any string
  • <ip_address>: the machine address
  • <username>: your username in the machine

Connect to the target machine

From a terminal use the following command to spawn a shell in the target machine

$ ssh <name>

Manage software

Use spack and module to manage the software. We have made a dedicated tutorial.

Account creation

Use this command to create a user:

$ sudo adduser <username>

Put a default password for every user. Switch to the new user with the command:

$ su <username>

Add its public key to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Create a file named ~/.spack/upstreams.yaml with the following context:

upstreams:
  spack-instance-1:
    install_tree:   /work2/spack/opt/spack/
    modules:
      tcl: /work2/spack/share/spack/module

Clone a user-specific spack:

$ mkdir -p /work2/<username>
$ git clone https://github.com/spack/spack.git /work2/<username>/spack
$ source /opt/dgadioli/spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh
$ spack config add modules:default:enable:[tcl]

Add the following lines to ~/.bashrc:

source /work2/<username>/spack/share/spack/setup-env.sh
spack load environment-modules
source $(spack location -i environment-modules)/init/bash