OK, you’ve got an HPC account, what next?

If you have got the HPC account (on either zeus or pluto HPC), the first thing you need to do is to change your temporary password. For this, you need to log in to HPC terminal/console with your temporary password and issue the command passwd.

This can be done by establishing SSH connection with one of the HPC headnodes (either zeus.coventry.ac.uk or pluto.coventry.ac.uk depending on which HPC you have the account on). SSH is a secure shell protocol used to login to remote computers via command line. There are few ssh-client apps allowing you to do this.

Connecting in console with secure shell (ssh)

To do that you will need ssh-client software. The possibilities are:

• Windows “native” ssh client (command line). If you have relatively recent copy of Windows 10, just open command window (Winkey+R: cmd.exe, Enter)
• If you are using Linux or Mac computer you already have native ssh client.

In either of these cases just open a terminal and type

ssh yourhpcusername@zeus.coventry.ac.uk

or if you are using pluto HPC:

ssh yourhpcusername@pluto.coventry.ac.uk

Using PuTTY as ssh-client

PuTTY free ssh client (also available from AppsAnywhere https://appsanywhere.coventry.ac.uk), or can be downloaded and installed on your desktop PC e.g. from https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. The documentation for using PuTTY can be found at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/docs.html

Using Google Chrome as ssh-client

You can install ssh extension for both Google Chrome or MS Edge browsers:

Secure Shell – Chrome Web Store (google.com)

Using Windows 10 Linux subsystem (WSL) apps

Since recently you can install mini Linux distribution on your Windows 10 PC. What you need is to first install optional Windows component (Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows Features on/off -> Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)). Once that done, reboot your PC, then go to Windows App store and get some Linux distro you are familiar with: Ubuntu, Debian etc and install it. Launch it, and you will be brought to full-functional Linux terminal, where you can install standard Linux console applications (for sure you may need “openssh-client” (Ubuntu) or “ssh” (Debian), e.g. for Ubuntu do “apt update; apt install openssh-client”). It is usefull to set up your WSL username the same as on HPC (saves time entering it all the time upon each ssh connection).

Connecting to the Desktop of HPC with VNC session (Remote Desktop like)

If you want to have a “Desktop” experience on HPC, once you have changed your temporary HPC password, you can use this way for VNC jobs/connection, see here : VNC jobs GUI HPC VNC jobs for Windows Clients | EEC High Performance Computing (coventry.domains)

Alex Pedcenko