Connecting (SSH)

There are several ways to login to and use the GWDG clusters. The most common way is using an SSH (Secure SHell) client to open a terminal on the cluster providing a command line interface. Various other tools such as many IDEs (VSCode, Emacs, etc.), file transfer programs (e.g. WinSCP), etc. can connect to the cluster using SSH under the hood, and thus require SSH to be setup.

Terminal Access via SSH

The terminal is the traditional and one of the most common methods of working on HPC clusters, providing an interface where one types commands and the output is printed to the screen just like in the image below. Follow the instructions for Installing SSH Clients followed by Generating SSH Keys, Uploading SSH Keys, and Configuring SSH.

IDE Access via SSH

Many IDEs can edit files directly on the cluster, run commands on the cluster, and/or provide their own terminal interfaces over SSH. Some are bundled with an SSH client builtin, while others require it to be installed just like for terminal access (see Installing SSH Clients for instructions). Many support using the same config file as the OpenSSH client in order to configure access to the frontend nodes (~/.ssh/config), as well as SSH keys. See Generating SSH Keys, Uploading SSH Keys and Configuring SSH to configure SSH access.