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institute_lorentz:institutelorentz_remoteaccess

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Remote Access to your Workstation

For security reasons, access to your Lorentz workstation is only possible within the Lorentz Institute intranet. Remote access can occur either securing your connection via an intermediate step called SSH tunneling (AKA port forwarding) or through the Lorentz Institute VPN service.

SSH tunneling

By means of an SSH tunnel you can transport any arbitrary data over an encrypted SSH connection. Members of the Lorentz Institute can use this technique to gain remote shell access to their workstation across our firewall which would prevent access otherwise.

How does it work?

You must have an ssh client installed on your personal device – e.g. laptop, PC – in order to establish a tunnelled connection.
The Lorentz Institute has a dedicated server (SSH server) ready to listen to any (authenticated) client connections.
Once a client-server connection is established, a given application contacts the SSH client on a chosen port on which the client is listening.
The SSH client in turns forwards all encrypted application data to the server which finally communicates with the actual application server.

For remote ssh connections to your IL workstation, the steps above can be summarised into the following. Establish an ssh client-server to our SSH server and instruct your SSH client to forward any new SSH-connection data that will be sent to an arbitrary port number to go via our SSH server. The server will then relay this information to the SSH server running on your workstation.

Here follows a few examples to help you get started.

Example 1

Demand that all SSH connections to port 2222 be forwarded via our IL SSH server to the SSH server running on your workstation

ssh -f <your_username>@ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl -L 2222:<your_workstation>.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl:22 -N

To initiate an SSH session to your workstation now you can type

ssh -p 2222 localhost

:!: For connections that will use the DISPLAY environment variable (think of any application with a GUI), add the option -X to your SSG commands.

Example 2

Case scenario: you are at home and you would like to connect to your workstation named `asselijn'. Locally (e.g. on your laptop), create a file .ssh/config with a section for the machine to which you want to log in, containing the ProxyCommand ssh option to do the tunnelling:

Host asselijn.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl asselijn
     ProxyCommand /usr/bin/ssh -W %h:%p ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl

And if you have a different username locally and on the institute desktops, that can be added like this:

Host asselijn.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl asselijn
     ProxyCommand /usr/bin/ssh -W %h:%p username@ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl
    User username

If you need access to multiple hosts, just copy and edit the example above.

Once this configuration is in place, a simple ssh asselijn will get you to the machine you have configured.

Example 3

:!: Users are encouraged to use maris OoD interface to launch jupyter notebook.

You sit in your office at the IL and have started a jupyter notebook on marisXX port YYYY. To connect to your notebook using the browser on your workstation you must tunnel through `xmaris'. Edit your local .ssh/config

Host maris
   HostName xmaris.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl
   LocalForward YYYY localhost:YYYY

Host marisXX
   HostName marisXX
   ProxyJump maris
   LocalForward YYYY localhost:YYYY

You are now ready to tunnel your connections through xmaris and visualize your notebook at http://localhost:YYYY.

NOTE: For this to work your workstation must have OpenSSH v7.3+.

Example 4

:!: Users are encouraged to use maris OoD interface to launch jupyter notebook.

Same situation as in Example 3 but this time you sit behind your laptop at home.

Host lorentz
     HostName ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl
     User <your-IL-username>
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Host maris
     HostName xmaris.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl
     ProxyJump lorentz
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
     User <your-IL-username>

Host marisXX
     HostName marisXX.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl
     ProxyJump maris
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
     User <your-IL-username>
     LocalForward YYYY localhost:YYYY

Example 5: Using Putty

:!: In the snapshots that follow, please replace all occurrences of novamaris with xmaris.

You will need to open two putty sessions. The first one opens a tunnel, the second one uses it. For the sake of clarity let us call the first session `Tunnel' and the second one `Tunnel_use'. In this example we will establish a connection to the Maris headnode novamaris through an ssh tunnel on ssh.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl.

Session 1: Tunnel

Open putty and create a session called Tunnel, then set it according to the snapshots below

Please note the settings in the port forwarding panel. We use an arbitrary port (2222), but you can choose any numbers above 1024 provided they are not currently in use. By pushing `Open', a terminal will appear so that you can authenticate using your Lorentz institute credentials. Leave this terminal open and proceed with the creation of session `Tunnel_use'

Now push `Open' and a terminal will appear asking your authentication credentials on novamaris. Any other putty connection to localhost:2222 will ssh directly to novamaris.

VNC: GNU/Linux

For detailed instructions on how to set up a vnc session you are encouraged to follow these instructions.

Finally, take a look at x2go should you be interested.

VNC: Windows Users

Please read here.

Proxy Browsing

Read here

institute_lorentz/institutelorentz_remoteaccess.1611733635.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021/01/27 07:47 by lenocil