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vm_connect.md

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Connecting to your virtual machines

There are different ways to interact with your virtual machines (VM):

  1. with a web interface (HTTP) with web-enabled cloud appliances, for example RStudio, Jupyter Notebooks;
  2. with the SSH command line interface (CLI) through a terminal window;
  3. with a remote graphical desktop (X2Go).

Once the deployment of your VM is done successfully, you can get all connection parameters from the column Access in the myVM tab of the biosphere portal. You will find the HTTP link (if any) to your VM, or the SSH parameters (username and IP address) to use to connect to your VM.

1) Connecting to the web interface of a VM

Simply click on the HTTPS link to be redirected to the web portal provided by your VM. In the case you are requested to provide the username and password, or the access token, they are provided through the parameters field Params in the Access column. These security parameters are unique for your VM and only known to you (and of course to the administrators of your group and of the cloud site for operationnal reasons).

2) Connecting with SSH to a VM

An SSH client is installed by default in any computer with Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian,...), MacOS (doc) and MS Windows 10 (and higher). From MS Windows 10 release, you can use both the PowerShell (doc) or the WSL - Windows Subsystem Linux - based on Ubuntu (doc).

Configuring your SSH parameters in the Biosphere portal

First, you need to configure your SSH parameters before creating a VM with SSH access. Indeed your SSH PubKey will be imported in your VM at its creation, and cannot be modified afterwards.

  1. Get your SSH PubKey

Open a terminal window (Linux, MacOS) or a PowerShell (MS Windows) and type the following command.

cat $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If you do not have already your SSH keys pair, you can create one with the following command.

ssh-keygen -t rsa

  1. Open your account parameters page

They are available from the user menu in the top-right corner of the Biopshere portal [go].

  1. Click the Edit button.

  2. Copy your SSH public key in the Pubkey field.

You can paste several public keys but be careful that each one is on one line only.

Opening the SSH connection to the VM

Opening the SSH connection to the VM simply requires you to click on the ssh link to be redirected to the terminal with an automatic SSH connection to your VM. This will work for MacOS and most Linux. For others systems, you have to copy from the ssh link, paste the copied text in a terminal or a PowerShell window, and replace the '://' by ' ' in the command to run. The connection will be opened according to the SSH key you configured (see above).

3) Opening a remote desktop with X2Go to a VM

Opening a remote desktop requires to both have configured your SSH parameters (see above) and installed the X2Go client and dependencies.

Configuring the software tools

Linux distributions have usually an X server installed by default.

Opening the remote desktop connection to the VM

You can get the connection parameters of the VM in the Params fields of the column Access (in the myVM tab).

  • username
  • IP/hostname of the VM
  • session type (usually XFCE)

Then, you will use them to configure a session in the X2Go client (see X2Go usage instructions). And do not forget to check the box for Automatic authentication (with SSH agent or default key)

Annex - Using the PuTTY software tool with MS Windows older than 10

We describe here the use of the PuTTY tool, which could be used to connect with SSH to your VM, or to a remote desktop with X2Go tool. This solution should be used only in case your MS Windows OS is older than MS Windows 10. For MS windows 10 and higher, we recommend to use the PowerShell (see above).

First, you need to install PuTTY on your machine. You can find both the download and installation instructions on the official web site. Take care to use the MSI (‘Windows Installer’).

  • Creating your SSH keys and configuring your Biosphere account

    1. Open the software PuTTYgen from the MS Windows Start menu.
    2. Choose SSH-2 RSA in the bottom and click on Generate.
    3. Click on the Save private key button to save the private key in a file called ClePriv-PUTTY on the Desktop (This file will be useful to open an SSH connection to your VM with PuTTY).
    4. Exec the menu Conversions > Export OpenSSH key to save the private key in a SSH-format file called ClePriv-SSH, also on the Desktop (You will need it to open a remote desktop with the X2Go tool, or with FileZila to tranfer data to/from the VM).
    5. Copy the public key from the Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH (...) at the top of the window.
    6. Paste this copied SSH public key in the field PubKey of your Biosphere account parameters.

  • Opening an SSH connection to your VM

    1. Open the software PuTTY from the MS Windows Start menu
    2. Copy the IP/hostname of your deployed VM from the Biosphere dashboard (put you mouse over ? next to the name of the VM)
    3. Paste the IP/hostname in the field Session > HostName (or IP address) (doc)
    4. Select SSH for the Connection type
    5. Fill the Auto-login username in the menu Data (doc) with the default one (ubuntu, debian or centos) according to the Linux system of your VM.
    6. Select the file ClePriv-PUTTY in the menu Connection > SSH >Auth > Private key file for authentication.

  • Opening a remote desktop to your VM

    1. Open the software X2Go from the MS Windows Start menu
    2. Create a new X2GO session (see above)