How do I Login to the HPC Clusters?

VPN Connection

Firstly, if you are off campus, you should connect to the VPN. If you want to find the instructions about how to access and how to connect, check kuvpn github and kuvpn help webpages.

Access Methods

For KUACC

From Windows, you can use a secure shell client, e.g. MobaXterm

Here is the direct link to (Please download installer edition)
Once you have mobaxterm installed follow this guide

Note if you have cygwin installed, you can open a cygwin-terminal and then use ssh the same as for Linux and Mac below. If you are not sure what cygwin is, you can safely ignore the above line.

From Linux and Mac, you can use the following methods:

Use ssh on the command line

CODE

ssh ku-username@login.kuacc.ku.edu.tr

For visualization, you can use -X or -Y options

Linux:

CODE

ssh username@login.kuacc.ku.edu.tr -Xl username

Mac:

CODE

ssh username@login.kuacc.ku.edu.tr -Yl username

Visualization with X/Y options can slow down your computer. If you want visualization which is fast or you will submit an interactive job or running some Matlab code, you may want to use VNC. To download VNC, follow the steps on this page

For more information about the visualization, visit interactive jobs page.

For DC2

While accessing the DC2, you can use a ssh client like MobaXterm, PuTTY, etc to reach the common address for “login” nodes at 172.20.240.205. This will take you to one of the virtual nodes, either login01 or login02 for your first login.

CODE

ssh ku-username@172.20.240.205

When you’re accessing the system for the first time, system will request you to change your password automatically. Since the default password expiration policy for the system is 180 days, you may need to access the system again via ssh in the future once your password expires. After changing your password you can continue to work in a terminal environment or with a graphical desktop interface.

From your Windows or Mac computer, you can use Remote Desktop Connection, or From Linux you can use Remmina to graphically access the same IP numbers to work under the Linux based virtual desktop environment.

RDP access on DC2 can provide GPU accelerated visualization and rendering with running GPU supported graphical applications running application together with vglrun command. As a test, while accesing the login nodes with RDP, you can run command “ vglrun glxgears ” in one terminal and run “ watch nvidia-smi ” on a separate terminal, this way you will see glxgears process under listed running GPU processes.

Important Notes

For both KUACC and DC2, you will be informed about the username and password after your account is opened.

Remember that you are on the login nodes when you log into the cluster. Please do not use login nodes to run your jobs. It is important that the nodes are not used for computation so that other users can connect to the cluster.