Connection and file transferring to HSE supercomputer for Linux and MacOS users

Remote terminal connection to the supercomputer (computing cluster) is made via head-end using the SSH protocol and file transfer via SFTP or SCP. To connect to an SSH server use address cluster.hpc.hse.ru with specified port 2222. Remember that credentials used for authorization do not match your HSE account: they are issued upon registration on the supercomputer. The recommended software for connection and transferring files to the supercomputer in Linux and MacOS are SSH and SCP.

Connection to the supercomputer

1. To connect to an SSH server from one of these operating systems, first open a terminal window.
2. Discover a path to the authorization key. For instance, let the key be located in /home/mylocaluser/keys/auth_key.pem.
3. If the key is used for the first time, set the correct access settings: chmod 600 /home/mylocaluser/keys/auth_key.pem.
4. To connect to an SSH server, type the following command into the terminal, replacing login with the name of your HSE account which have been received during registration on the supercomputer (as an example, ssh -p 2222 apetrov@cluster.hpc.hse.ru):
   ssh -p 2222 -i /home/mylocaluser/keys/auth_key.pem login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru
5. The system will prompt you to enter the password for the key. Please note characters are not displayed in the console when entering a password! Enter the password or copy it from the registration letter. Press ENTER when finished. If you have entered your password correctly the console will display a greeting message of the day and the prompt for entering commands.
6. If the password was wrong, the console will give the Enter passphrase for key 'auth_key.pem':" message so the password will need to be entered again. Please note that entering an incorrect password for more than 4 will block the connection to the IP address of your computer for 1 hour.
7. To work with applications with a graphical interface running on a supercomputer, it is necessary to add the key -X when connecting (note that the GUI of applications on the supercomputer will be displayed on the local PC and only if your system is X11):
   ssh -p 2222 -X login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru
8. The graphical user interface of applications running on the supercomputer will be displayed on your local computer. This feature requires an X11 environment to be installed on the local machine.

FIle transferring to the supercomputer with SCP

The general syntax for an scp program is following:
scp [options] input_file destination
The source file and destination can be both files on the local computer and on a remote one. Unlike ssh, it uses the capital letter -P to specify the port. Please note SCP does not issue requests to overwrite already present files on the recipient side and replaces them with files from the source.

To copy a file from the local PC to the supercomputer, type the following command into the terminal, replacing login with the name of your HSE account which have been received during registration on the supercomputer, /home/user/file with file on PC and /home/login/ with destination on the supercomputer:
scp -P 2222 /home/local/file login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru:/home/login/

To copy a directory, including all its files and subdirectories, use the -r: option:
scp -P 2222 -r /home/local/folder/ login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru:/home/login/
Remember you should write a directory path variable end with a trailing slash!
To copy files to the home directory on the supercomputer /home/login/ can be crossed out leaving only the colon.

To copy a file from the the supercomputer to local PC, type the following command into the terminal:
scp -P 2222 login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru:/home/login/file /home/local/
To copy directory including all its files and subdirectories also use the option -r:
scp -P 2222 -r login@cluster.hpc.hse.ru:/home/folder/ /home/local/
Remember you should write a directory path variable end with a trailing slash!

You can find additional information on using these utilities in the manuals: ssh and scp.

If you have any difficulties connecting to HSE computing cluster, please contact the supercomputer modeling department by phone 27968 or by email hpc@hse.ru.