Accessing the System

Getting an Account on the Cluster

There are multiple ways to get an account/allocation on the Campus Cluster, including:

• The Illinois Computes program (free to Illinois researchers).

  See the Campus Cluster Illinois Computes Queue Policy for information about Illinois Computes allocations on the Campus Cluster.

• Investing in (buying) compute and/or storage resources.

• Affiliation with an existing Campus Cluster investor.

Visit Ways to Access the Illinois Campus Cluster for more details. Go to NCSA Allocations for information about allocations on all of NCSA’s resources.

Logging in to the Cluster

Note

Logging in to the Campus Cluster now requires multi-factor authentication (MFA) with Duo. After you enter your NetID password, you will be prompted to authenticate with your University of Illinois Duo account.

After you have an account/allocation on the Campus Cluster, connect to the head (login) nodes via Secure Shell (SSH) with your University of Illinois NetID and NetID password.

Head (Login) Node Hostnames

Head (Login) Node Hostnames

Head (Login) Node Hostname	Description
cc-login.campuscluster.illinois.edu	Alias that round-robin logs in to one of the Campus Cluster head (login) nodes.
cc-login[1-5].campuscluster.illinois.edu	There are five Campus Cluster head (login) nodes, cc-login1, cc-login2, cc-login3, cc-login4, cc-login5.

User-generated SSH keys are not allowed. Multi-factor authentication with your University of Illinois Duo account is required. If you have any questions, please submit a support request.

SSH Log In Steps

The following are steps to log in to the Campus Cluster in a terminal. Laptops/desktops generally have an SSH client by default, but there is also third party software that you can install. See SSH Clients for a non-exhaustive list of clients that can be used to access the Campus Cluster.

1. Enter the following command in a terminal (replace netid with your University NetID).

   ssh [email protected]
   

2. Enter your NetID password, when prompted. Note, the terminal will not show your password (or placeholder symbols such as asterisks [*]) as you type.

3. Complete DUO MFA, when prompted.

   The prompt will look similar to the following. Enter 1 or 2 to choose the push notification or SMS (text message) option, or enter the six-digit passcode from your DUO app.

   Enter a passcode or select one of the following options:
   
    1. Duo Push to XXX-XXX-####
    2. SMS passcodes to XXX-XXX-####
   
   Passcode or option (1-2):
   

   On successful log in to the cluster, you will see a welcome message similar to the following.

   

SSH Clients

A variety of SSH-based clients are available for accessing the Campus Cluster from your local system. There are two types of SSH clients, clients that support both remote login access and data transfers, and clients that support data transfers only.

SSH clients

SSH Client	Remote Login	Data Transfer	Installs On
MobaXterm is an enhanced terminal with an X server and a set of Unix commands (GNU/Cygwin) packaged in the application.	Yes	Yes	Windows
Tunnelier is a flexible SSH client which includes terminal emulation, graphical as well as command-line sftp support, and ftp-to-sftp bridge, additional tunneling features including dynamic port forwarding through integrated proxy.	Yes	Yes	Windows
PuTTY is an open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client.	Yes	Yes	Windows Linux Mac OS
FileZilla is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS, and sftp client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.	No	Yes	Windows Linux Mac OS
WinSCP is an open source free sftp client, FTPS client, and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is file transfer between a local computer and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers scripting and basic file manager functionality.	No	Yes	Windows

See the Storage and Data Guide for information on transferring files/data to and from the Campus Cluster.

Log In Errors

Error: “/usr/bin/xauth: error in locking authority file /home//.Xauthority”

Possible Cause: This usually indicates that you are over your home directory quota.

Network Details for Illinois Investors

The Campus Cluster is interconnected with the University of Illinois networks via the Campus Advanced Research Network Environment (CARNE) and is addressed out of fully accessible public IP space, located outside of the Illinois campus firewall. This positioning outside of the campus firewall enables access to regional and national research networks at high speeds and without restrictions. However, there may be some special use cases where Campus Cluster nodes need to initiate communication with hosts on the Illinois campus network (for example, you are hosting a special license server behind the firewall). For these, you will need to coordinate with your department IT pro to ensure that your hosts are in the appropriate Illinois campus firewall group.

Outbound communication from Illinois to the Campus Cluster should work without issue, as well as any communications from the Campus Cluster outbound to regional and national research networks.