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Preparation Workshop

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Etienne Boileau edited this page May 8, 2025 · 2 revisions

How to get ready for the practical

Overview

To get access to the HPC cluster of the Dieterich Lab you need:

  • WireGuard: A VPN tunnel to access the internal network of the Dieterich Lab
  • SSH: A secure terminal connection to the servers
  • TLS: Dieterich Lab's CA certificate to access the internal web applications

For any issues regarding credentials and access, contact the system administrator at [email protected].

WireGuard

Consult the "road warrior" setup. The General Hints and one of GUI Setup (Windows, Mac-OS) or Command Line (Linux) sections should be sufficient to get you started.

SSH

The most common way of connecting to a remote Linux server is through SSH (Secure Shell). To do this, your computer must have an SSH client. OpenSSH is the most widely used SSH client and server system, found in most Linux distributions. To SSH on Windows, you can use a third-party utility with a graphical user interface (GUI), such as PuTTY.

Public key authentication

Clients authenticate using passwords (not recommended) or SSH keys. SSH keys are a matching set of cryptographic keys used for authentication. Generating a new SSH public and private key pair on your local computer is the first step. On Linux, open a terminal and write:

ssh-keygen

Choose the location to store your private key or press ENTER to use defaults. This generates an RSA SSH key pair, located by default in the .ssh hidden directory in your user's home directory. These files are:

  • ~/.ssh/id_rsa: The private key. DO NOT SHARE THIS FILE!
  • ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub: The public key.

Copy the key to the remote server:

ssh-copy-id cluster.internal

On most systems, you can also use a graphical configuration assistant. On Windows, launch the PuTTY SSH client.

TLS

The Dieterich Lab web services use an internal certificate authority (CA). Consult the installation instructions. Click the following link to download the certificate:

Testing

SSH

Bring your WireGard interface up and

ssh cluster.internal

Internal services

Bring your WireGard interface up and browse to:

The login screen of JupyterHub or RStudio should open without errors or warnings. Use your credentials to login.

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