Connecting to Engaging

After configuring your SSH keys by following the SSH Configuration page and installing both VSCode and the Remote-SSH extension you can login to Engaging by following the commands below.

1. Open the VSCode command palette.

   1. Windows: Ctrl + Shift + P

   2. MacOS: Command + Shift + P

2. Search for the Remote-SSH: Connect to Host option, and click it.

To directly login to an Engaging compute node on Windows, you must manually start a compute node session from the Engaging head node, then edit your SSH configuration file with the compute node you were granted. For example:

[asoberan@login008 ~]$ salloc --time=2:00:00
# salloc: Pending job allocation 23556187
# salloc: job 23556187 queued and waiting for resources
# salloc: job 23556187 has been allocated resources
# salloc: Granted job allocation 23556187
# salloc: Nodes node3603 are ready for job
[asoberan@node3603 ~]$ 

The SSH configuration file is located at C:\Users\<your local username>\.ssh\config . Change HostName to node3603.

Host orcd-login
    HostName orcd-login.mit.edu 
    User asoberan
    IdentityFile C:\Users\asoberan\.ssh\orcd
    IdentitiesOnly yes

Host orcd-compute
  User asoberan
  HostName node3603
  ProxyJump orcd-login

1. Select the configured Engaging host:

   1. orcd-login: To login to the Engaging login node.

   2. orcd-compute: To login to an Engaging compute node.

2. A new window will open with a VSCode session connected to Engaging.

All actions performed in this remotely-connected window will be executed on Engaging. For example, if you click the left-hand sidebar menu option Explorer > Open Folder, you can open a remote folder. Doing this will populate your explorer with your Engaging files and directories, and opening a terminal via Terminal > New Terminal will start a shell on Engaging.

Likewise, you can navigate to the Ports menu to forward a local port on your computer to a port on the Engaging cluster. We will see an example of this in a later section.