In order to obtain access to any of our systems you need to follow two steps (described further below):
To register for HPC access, fill out the appropriate form:
On some of our systems, you will be asked to estimate how many resources you expect to require. If you are inexperienced with this, do not be put off by that field. Your estimate does not have to be highly accurate.
The address of the cluster will be e-mailed to you upon registering your account.
Your login credentials differ between our clusters:
Access to all of our systems is only possible from within the network (or VPN) of the University of Bonn.
Using SSH is explained in the SSH sections in our Linux tutorial. Scroll down the list of topics to find those sections.
Connecting to our clusters is usually done using the SSH protocol and specifically the OpenSSH software. Linux, macOS, and Windows 10 (since Update 1709) support SSH natively. OpenSSH by itself will let you open a Linux console on the cluster. The SCP protocol, which is based on SSH, supports securely copying files between your machine and the cluster. Additionally, there are various front-end programs for SSH connections and/or SCP file transfer available to simplify this, especially the free software MobaXTerm for Windows.
With OpenSSH installed on your system you can log in on a cluster by providing your username and the address of the cluster to the ssh command:
ssh <user>@<address>
where the address is:
bender.hpc.uni-bonn.debonna.hpc.uni-bonn.demarvin.hpc.uni-bonn.deStarting from September 25, 2024, logging in on Marvin will require you to add a public SSH key to FreeIPA. See our guide on how to generate and upload such a key.
The following are optional tweaks that are not necessary to connect, but can make your life easier.
Most of this information is also covered in the SSH sections of our Linux tutorial.
As mentioned before, this is mandatory on Marvin, but optional on our other systems.
You can generate a public/private key pair and use instead of your password for logging in. This has the advantage of being potentially more secure and easier to automate.
To use keys, you need to first create a key pair and then upload the public key to the cluster. Both steps are described below.
The following steps need to be executed on your machine, not on the cluster.
The example file paths are for a Linux system, but they work analogously on Windows and Mac OS.
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 100 -C "<your_uni-id@uni-bonn.de>" ( with " )/home/uni-id/.ssh/id_ed25519.Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):Enter same passphrase again:$HOME/.ssh The public key is id_ed25519.pub(if not renamed) , which is the one to be shared.DO NOT share your private key with other people.
To authorize yourself using your SSH key it initially needs to be added to the machine you want to connect to. This can be done using ssh-copy-id <uni-id>@bender.hpc.uni-bonn.de (or the equivalent for the other systems) and your password. Now you can log in using your SSH key.
The Windows implementation of SSH does not have the
ssh-copy-idcommand.In this case, you have to open the public key file with a text editor and copy the key (it should be one line of text). Then on the cluster, open the file
/home/<your username>/.ssh/authorized_keyswith a text editor and paste the line of text there. Make sure it is all in one line and you do not accidentally modify any other lines of text that might be in there. If the.sshfolder or theauthorized_keysfile do not exist, you can simply create them.
It is a good idea to create a shortcut for any given SSH connection, so you do not need to re-enter all the options every time you call SSH.
You can do that by creating a text file name config in the .ssh folder in your home directory. Both the folder and the file may or may not be already there. If they are not, you can simply create them. If you are on Windows, you need to make sure that it does not automatically add .txt to the text file.
The available parameters are described in the SSH documentation and some of them are rather advanced. Below is a basic example for an entry to connect to Bender:
host bender
Hostname bender.hpc.uni-bonn.de
User demouser
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
After defining this, you can simply type ssh bender to connect.
By default, you can only run console-based applications via an SSH connection. It is possible to open graphical applications on the cluster, using a feature called X11 forwarding, under the following conditions:
ssh -X <all the other options>.ForwardX11 yesFind out more detailed information on how to set up OpenSSH on the HPC-Wiki or read further on this website about running jobs, storing and transfering data, or using and installing software.