Log in to Roihu

‼️ To begin make sure you have a user account at CSC that is a member of a project which has access to the Roihu service and perhaps Allas. Note that there’s a small delay before one can login to Roihu after creating a new project and adding services.

‼️ In order to log in with SSH from the command-line, you must have also set up SSH keys and uploaded your public key to MyCSC. See the previous tutorial.

Roihu web interface

💬 Connecting via the Roihu web interface is an easy way to access the Roihu supercomputer.

  1. Open a web browser and go to https://www.roihu.csc.fi
  2. Login with your CSC account (or Haka/Virtu)
  3. You have now connected to Roihu!

💭 The Roihu web interface landing page looks like this:

Roihu web interface

💡 From the pinned apps and top menus you can, for example, access your files and open some applications or a command-line interface.

Connecting with SSH from the command-line

‼️ Roihu has separate login nodes for CPU and GPU usage. This tutorial assumes that you want to connect to Roihu CPU login nodes roihu-cpu.csc.fi. To use the GPU resources, you need to connect to the GPU login nodes roihu-gpu.csc.fi.

💬 The basic Command-Line Interface (CLI) in Unix-based systems is the Terminal.

💡 Different operating systems have slightly different CLIs and SSH clients, i.e. programs that you can use to connect to the supercomputers.

Connecting from Linux and macOS

💬 Laptops and workstations running Linux or macOS typically have SSH pre-installed.

Find the Terminal on your computer:

terminal-icon

  1. Open a terminal and type (replace cscusername with your CSC username):

    ssh cscusername@roihu-cpu.csc.fi

    • Note! If you have saved your SSH key with a non-default name or in a non-default location, please specify the path to your key using the -i option:

      ssh cscusername@roihu-cpu.csc.fi -i /path/to/private/key

  2. You may be prompted to type your SSH key passphrase.

    💡 To avoid having to type your passphrase every time you connect to a CSC supercomputer, the ssh-agent utility can hold your keys in memory. Using ssh-agent is not necessary, but makes using SSH keys very convenient!

    • On Linux systems, ssh-agent is typically configured and run automatically at login and requires no additional actions on your part.

    • On macOS systems, you should add the following lines to the ~/.ssh/config file:

      Host *
    UseKeychain no
    AddKeysToAgent yes

  3. Scroll down to In Roihu.

Connecting from Windows

💬 On Windows you have different options:

‼️ The following steps assume you use MobaXterm. More examples can be found in Docs CSC.

  1. Launch MobaXterm from the applications list (opens from the Windows logo), or search for it in the bottom bar search box.
  2. Click Session in the top-left corner and select SSH.
  3. In the Basic SSH settings section, write roihu-cpu.csc.fi in the Remote host field.
  4. Tick the Specify username box and enter your CSC username. The Port number can be left as 22 (default).
  5. In the Advanced SSH settings section, tick the Use private key box and add the path to the SSH private key you generated in the previous tutorial.

  6. Click OK. If it is the first time you are connecting to Roihu, click Accept.

    mobaxterm-view

  7. You are asked to enter your SSH key passphrase.

    💡 To avoid having to type your passphrase every time you connect, you may enable the MobAgent authentication agent in the program settings, Settings > SSH > SSH agents. Tick the Use internal SSH agent “MobAgent” box and select the key(s) you want to load.

  8. You’ve now connected to Roihu!

    💡 The next time you want to login to Roihu, just select it from the User session menu on the left!

    💡 Note, you may also login with MobaXterm using the plain ssh command similar to Linux and macOS (see image below).

    mobaxterm-view

In Roihu

  1. If you’re connecting to Roihu (or a specific Roihu login node) for the first time, SSH will ask you if you trust the authenticity of the host:

    The authenticity of host 'roihu-cpu-login4.csc.fi' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:kk0Tar9opQ+6Gq0GWJdWVVvFEMeI6kW1DW1VOYveT5c.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?
  2. The first time you connect, you need to accept, but the key should not change for the next login.
  3. Pay attention to whether you logged in to roihu-cpu-login1, roihu-cpu-login2, roihu-cpu-login3 or roihu-cpu-login4.

  4. Once you’ve logged in you’ll see a greeting starting something like this:

    ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ 
┃         CSC - Tieteen tietotekniikan keskus - IT Center for Science         ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┃ ██████▙▄▄▄         ▗▄▟████▙▄▖       ▌      ▌         ▌       ▌         ▌    ┃ 
┃ ███████████▙     ▟████████████▙     █▙▄▁   █▙▄▁      █▙▄▁    █▙▄▁      █▙▄▁ ┃ 
┃ ▔▀▜█   ▀████   ▗█████▀▘  ▝▀█████▖   ████   ████      ████    ████      ████ ┃ 
┃    ▐   ▄████   ▟███▛        ▜███▙   ████   ████▄▄▄▄▄▄████    ████      ████ ┃ 
┃ ███████████▘   ████▌        ▐████   ████   ██████████████    ████      ████ ┃ 
┃ ██████████▙    ▐████▖      ▗████▌   ████   ████▀▀▀▀▀▀████    ████      ████ ┃ 
┃ ████   ████▙    ▀█████▙▄▄▟█████▀    ████   ████      ████    ▀████▄▄▄▟████▛ ┃ 
┃ ▔▀▜█    ▀████▖   ▝▀██████████▀▘     ▔▀▜█   ▔▀▜█      ▔▀▜█     ▝██████████▀  ┃ 
┃    ▐      ▀▀▀▀       ▝▀▀▀▀▘            ▐      ▐         ▐        ▝▀▀▀▀▘     ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┃                   Roihu.csc.fi - Bull BullSequana XH3000                    ┃ 
┃              486 AMD Turin CPU nodes - 132 Nvidia GH200 GPU nodes           ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┠─── Links ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┨ 
┃ Documentation:         https://docs.csc.fi                                  ┃ 
┃ Account management:    https://my.csc.fi                                    ┃ 
┃ Getting started guide: https://docs.csc.fi/support/tutorials/roihu          ┃ 
┃ Web interface:         https://roihu.csc.fi                                 ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┠─── Info ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┨ 
┃  All GPU jobs should be launched from roihu-gpu login node, and             ┃ 
┃  all CPU jobs should be launched from roihu-cpu login node                  ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┃  Available modules can be listed with module avail and module spider        ┃ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┠─── News ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┨ 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
... 
┃                                                                             ┃ 
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
[cscusername@roihu-cpu-login4 ~]$
  5. Now, you’re ready to go!

  6. Let’s do our first small task in Roihu: let’s check our projects and that we have a one with access to Allas service!

    csc-projects
module load allas
allas-conf
    1. The first command csc-projects lists your projects.
    2. The second command module load allas loads the Allas tools in your use.
    3. The third command allas-conf sets up the connection to Allas: it will ask for your CSC password, and then you need to select which project you want to use (by typing the number of the project, for example 2).
      • If you don’t see a project here, please return to CSC account and project tutorial and ensure that you have a project with access to Allas service. Please note that it can take up to an hour after accepting the terms of use before the service is in use.

Remote graphics

💬 Remote graphics may not work by default. Try the Roihu web interface for running graphical applications.

💬 Another option is to enable X11-tunneling as follows.

On Linux and macOS

  1. Add X11-tunneling to your SSH connection by adding -X or -Y to your ssh command like this (replace cscusername with your CSC username):

    ssh -X cscusername@roihu-cpu.csc.fi

  2. Note that on Mac you need to have an X server running, for example XQuartz. You also need to set in your .bashrc:

    export DISPLAY=:0

On Windows

  1. MobaXterm will actually tunnel the connection by default!
  2. PuTTY requires that an X server is installed and running. One of the options is Xming.
  3. In PuTTY, X11 forwarding is enabled in the connection settings: Connection > SSH > X11: Enable X11 forwarding.

☝🏻 For intensive remote graphics we recommend using the Roihu web interface.

More information

💭 Docs CSC: Connecting