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Prerequisites

To access a supercomputer, users have a Pawsey account, comprising a username and a password. The account must also be a member of an active project allocation on the selected supercomputer. For new users, an account creation email with instructions is sent when you receive an allocation or are added to a project.

Introduction

Pawsey supercomputers are accessed remotely through the SSH protocol. Most of the time users employ the ssh command-line tool installed on their computers, which allows executing commands through a terminal window; other programs implementing the SSH protocol may be used. To execute programs that display a graphical interface you can use X forwarding over SSH.

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Use SSH to connect to a supercomputer

The login node of a Pawsey supercomputer is reachable through the Internet at an assigned public hostname. The hostname of the login nodes of each Pawsey's supercomputer is listed in table 1. On Mac and Linux computers, the preinstalled command-line tool ssh can The linux command ssh should be used by users to connect to the login node of a remote host,  as as shown in the following line.

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Table 1. List of Pawsey's supercomputing systems' hostnames.

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An SSH key is an access credential in the SSH protocol. Its function is similar to that of username and password but enables automated processes and single sign-on users.

Login nodes

The hostname of a supercomputing system is often a pseudonym of several login nodes that the system may have. When connecting remotely, connections are randomly placed on a login node from where you interact with the rest of the system using a round-robin DNS technique. The actual hostname of the login node ("setonix-1" in the example below) can be easily obtained by executing the hostname Linux command after an SSH connection has been established. Terminal 1 illustrates an SSH connection to a login node and outputting the hostname.

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$ ssh username@setonix.pawsey.org.au
Password:
Last login: Mon Jan 10 11:07:13 2022 from 130.116.145.55
##############################################################################
#                    Pawsey Supercomputing Centre                            #
#        Empowering cutting-edge research for Australia's future             #
#                                                                            #
#     This service is for authorised clients only.                           #
#     It is a criminal offence to:                                           #
#          - Obtain access to data without permission                        #
#          - Damage, delete, alter or insert data without permission         #
#                                                                            #
##############################################################################
.
.
.
===============================================================================
 By using Pawsey facilities you agree to the Conditions of use available at
 https://support.pawsey.org.au/documentation/display/US/Conditions+of+Use
 
===============================================================================
username@setonix-1:~> hostname
setonix-1

Many users share the login nodes at the same time. Therefore, operations that generate heavy loads on login nodes must be avoided.

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Follow these tips to use the login nodes correctly and effectively:

Do not transfer, copy or delete large amounts of files or data through the login nodes.

Do not run programs or build/compile tools on login nodes if these operations would take more than a few minutes.

Instead, perform heavy workloads on the compute nodes.

Perform I/O-intensive operations through the data mover system (hpc-data.pawsey.org.au), whose nodes are explicitly devoted to that, or else submit them to the copy partition, which uses the data mover nodes.

Graphical interfaces

Unlike personal computers running operating systems such as Windows, MacOS or Ubuntu, our systems do not provide a graphical windowing environment. Nevertheless, some of the tools provided on Pawsey systems do have Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). To allow these tools to control your local display and open up a new GUI (such as for a debugger), use the X forwarding option "-X" of SSH, as explained in Use Graphical (GUI) Programs with X over SSH.

Remote development using Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a popular free and open-source code editing application that can be deployed on Linux, macOS and Windows. Its strengths are the integrated terminal, simplicity, extensible, and remote editing. Please refer to the Visual Studio HomePage (external site) to learn more about Visual Studio Code and for downloading and installation instructions.

Although the integrated terminal on Visual Studio Code can be used directly to SSH login to Pawsey systems, a useful feature is the Remote Development extension pack that can be installed from the Marketplace within the application. It allows opening remote directories and files as if they were local to the machine where the editor is running. Follow the instructions on the official web page Remote Development using SSH (external site).

After the standard installation procedure, you may also need to check the box for Remote.SSH: Lockfiles in Tmp, under Settings, in order to connect to Pawsey systems.

Related pages

• Pawsey Conditions of Use
• Use Graphical (GUI) Programs with X over SSH

External links

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Related pages