Login to cluster

To login to the ALICE cluster you need to perform a hop-like login sequence. The two login nodes of the ALICE cluster cannot be accessed directly. One must first login to an ssh gateway and then to one of the login nodes. This mechanism is required for both login and file transfer operations. Below we describe how to perform these actions from Linux and Windows, separately.

Login to ALICE from Linux

The login nodes are named:

login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl (10.161.0.12)
login2.alice.universiteitleiden.nl (10.162.0.13)

The Storage device is name:

 campusdata20.alice.universiteitleiden.nl (10.161.0.33)

Setup ssh JUMP

In your linux server write in ~/.ssh/config for instance

Host hpc1 
  HostName login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyJump <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl:22
  
Host hpc2
  HostName login2.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyJump <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl:22

Host hpcdata
  HostName campusdata20.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyJump <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl:22

(Replace <USERNAME> by your own ULCN account name.)

If you want to look at the monitoring tools that are running on the management node too, you could add additional tunneling commands to the config for a specific host. Do not add tunnels to all definitions as they may produce conflicts when you use the samen tunnel twice. So add the tunnel commands, for instance, to one host like:

Host hpc1tunnel
  HostName login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyJump <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl:22
  LocalForward 8081 management.alice.universiteitleiden.nl:8081
  LocalForward 8080 management.alice.universiteitleiden.nl:443

Alternatively, if your openssh server isn't that recent and doesn't recognize the ProxyJump alias, try this:

Host hpc1 
  HostName login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  ForwardX11 yes
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyCommand ssh -X <USERNAME>@sshgw.leidenuniv.nl -W %h:%p

Login to ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl (ssh <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl and use your ULCN password for this) and put your public key in

~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Login through to the HPC login1 node ''ssh login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl' (use your ALICE provided password) and put the same public key in

~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Direct login to login node 1

 ssh hpc1

and you can even forward X11 now.

Tunneling to monitors

Having setup the ssh tunneling required to access the monitoring tools on the cluster you are now able to access port 443 (general secure web server on the management node) and port 8081 (specific port in use by the Bright Cluster Manager monitoring tools).

So in a browser you could type:

https://localhost:8080

to gain access to the management main web server, or you could type:

https://localhost:8081/userportal

to gain access to the Bright Cluster Manager User Portal.

Login to ALICE from Windows

There are two way to connect to ALICE:

• Using the Windows2ALICE-connector app., click here: Connect from Windows
• Using putty, as described here.

Login to ALICE from a MAC

Logging in with a Mac requires no extra installation on your local machine.

• Under “File”, open a new finder window. Navigate to the “Applications” folder, then the “Utilities” folder. Open a terminal window.
• Edit your ~/.bash_profile to incorporate:

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

• Open a new tab to make sure these settings are in effect (Shell -> New Tab).
• Edit your ~/.ssh/config file and put in:

Host hpc1 
  HostName login1.alice.universiteitleiden.nl
  User <USERNAME>
  ProxyJump <USERNAME>@ssh-gw.leidenuniv.nl:22

(Replace <USERNAME> by your own ULCN account name.)

Now you can login to the ALICE login 1 node by typing on the command line:

 ssh hpc1

All other settings are similar to the Linux login setup