This guide will help you set up your HACC account, booking and accessing a server, and validate server’s Xilinx accelerator card. We will cover the following sections:
- Setting your passwords
- Setting your secure remote access
- Booking and accessing a server
- Validating a Xilinx accelerator card
Before continuing, please make sure you have been already accepted on ETH Zürich HACC program and you have a valid user account. In any other case, please visit Get started.
Once your ETH account has been created, you will need to generate two different passwords: an LDAP/Active directory password and a RADIUS password. The first one is part of your main ETH credentials; the remote authentication dial-in user service (RADIUS) password is used for setting your remote secure access. Please, follow these steps to generate them:
- Visit the ETH Zürich Web Center,
- Click on Forgot your password to receive a temporal password to use with Web Center,
- Log in to Web Center and click on Self service/Change password,
- Select the LDAPS and Active Directory checkboxes and introduce your new password, and
- Select the Radius checkbox and introduce your new password.
Setting your passwords.
You must be connected to the ETH network to access the cluster. If this is not the case, you first need to establish a secure remote connection—either through a jump host [1] or a virtual private network (VPN)—before being able to use the HACC servers.
To make use of ETH’s jumphost, first you would need to edit your ~/.ssh/config file by adding the following lines:
ServerAliveInterval 300
ServerAliveCountMax 12
Host jumphost.inf.ethz.ch
User ETHUSER
Host *.ethz.ch !jumphost.inf.ethz.ch
User ETHUSER
ProxyJump jumphost.inf.ethz.ch
After that, you should be able to access HACC servers with SSH, for instance: ssh ETHUSER@alveo-build-01.ethz.ch. Please note that for the proposed ssh-configuration file, you must include the whole domain when you try to log in to the server.
Accessing the HACC via VPN connection will exclusively be through the Cisco Secure Client client. Please follow the How to set up VPN section for a proper configuration. Remember to make use of your RADIUS password!
After configuring our passwords and virtual private network connection, the next step would be to reserve a server through the booking system and then access it. Please remember that you must be connected to the ETH network to make use of the booking system.
Please, follow these steps to book a server:
- Log in into the booking system using your main LDAP/Active directory password,
- Once you are on the Dashoboard page, please click on New booking,
- Select the Time range, the Boards or servers you wish to book, along with a mandatory Comment referring to your research activites, and
- Press the Book button.
We would like you to follow the booking rules while you work with the cluster.
Booking a server.
After booking a server—and assuming you are connected to ETH network via VPN— you should be able to access it using ssh, i.e.: ssh jmoyapaya@alveo-u50d-05. Please remember that for accessing a server you should also use your main LDAP/Active directory password:
Accessing a server.
You can also make use of X11 forwarding if you need to run graphical applications on the remote server (for instance, Vivado). For this, please add a -X after the ssh command, i.e.: ssh -X jmoyapaya@alveo-u50d-05.
Once you are logged into a server, you should be able to validate server’s accelerator card with xbutil validate --device:
Validating a Xilinx accelerator card.
It is possible that when you log on to a server, you may find that the previous user has left the server in Vivado mode. In such a situation, you have the opportunity to revert the server to work again with the Vitis workflow by following the instructions on the screen:
Reverting to Vitis workflow is based on the hot-plug boot process.