Getting Started With SSH
Overview
Secure Shell (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. It is used in the CSIF for remote command line login, remote command execution, and for securing other network services. This documentation will take you through the steps on how to SSH into one of the CSIF’s machines.
You should use your UC Davis LoginID (your login username) when logging into the CSIF. This can be different from the first part of your email address. You can check the status of your account if needed.
UNIX (Linux/Mac OS)
- If you are using some sort of UNIX environment, the steps are simple.
- Launch a terminal
- Choose one of our machines and use the following command to connect to the computer:
$ ssh LoginID@pcXX.cs.ucdavis.edu
Remember to replace USERNAME with your UC Davis kerberos username and pcXX with one of our machines (pc1 - pc60).
- If you wish to set up SSH keys for easier login, you can follow the instructions here:
COMING SOON
Windows
If you are using a Windows machine, things are a bit more complicated. You have two main choices. You can either setup a Terminal emulator such as PuTTY or MobaXTerm or you can setup a linux environment using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Terminal Emulator
One way to ssh is to use a Terminal Emulator like PuTTY or MobaXTerm. The setup instructions below are specific to PuTTY, but the process for MobaXTerm is fairly similar. It is just a different User Interface.
- Download and install PuTTY from its official site here: https://www.putty.org/
- Once installed, launch PuTTY
- Under the Session Category, Enter the pc you wish to connect to in the “Host Name” box at the top.
- For the CSIF machines this should be in the format pcXX.cs.ucdavis.edu with pcXX being the machine you wish to connect to (pc1 - pc60), ie pc13.cs.ucdavis.edu.
- Under “Connection type:” click “SSH.
- Click Open to start the session and connect to the CSIF
- Enter your LoginID, which is your campus UID.
- Enter your campus password
WSL -
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in Executable and Linkable Format) natively on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. In May 2019, WSL 2 was announced, introducing important changes such as a real Linux kernel, through a subset of Hyper-V features.
To enable WSL please follow these steps. You must have an administrator account to do this.
Warning: this will cause your computer to reboot. Please save all your work before beginning.
- Press the key combination Windows key + S. This should open up a search bar
- In the search bar type in Control Panel
- Click on “Programs - Uninstall a program“ in the lower left corner
- Under “Programs and Features”, Click on Turn Windows features on or off in the left sidebar
- In the window that pops up, scroll down and check Windows Subsystem for Linux.
- Press ok to apply the changes
- Press the Restart Now button to restart your machine
- Open up the Microsoft Store, search for Linux, and click the Show all link next to the apps section
- Install your favorite distro. If you are a beginner, we recommend Ubuntu as that is what the CSIF uses
- If you choose to use Ubuntu, just install the one without the version numbers
- Once installed launch the app and wait a few minutes for it to initialize the distro
- After a few minutes it will ask you for a username. We recommend setting your username to be the same as your UC Davis Kerberos LoginID.
- If the application does not ask you for a username after a few minutes, resize the window. Sometimes it gets stuck and resizing will force it to refresh
- If it takes longer than 15 minutes, something went wrong. Close the app, uninstall it, and reinstall it to try again
- It will then ask you for a password. This can be anything you want.
You should now have a linux terminal environment. To SSH click on the distro you installed and go back up to the UNIX section and follow those instructions