Access methods¶
There are a variety of ways you can access the SCF computers.
Using SSH: The most basic access to SCF computers is via SSH to get to a command line on the machine of your choosing.
Example: to SSH to the login server named
arwen, you would connect toarwen.berkeley.edu. From there you can see your home directory, connect to other SCF machines without using a password, and start jobs on the SCF Linux cluster.
Using your web browser: You can use our JupyterHub to access
Jupyter notebooks (IPython, R, and Julia notebooks as well as others)
Terminal sessions (similar to SSH command-line sessions, but from within your browser)
VS (Visual Studio) Code sessions
Linux desktop sessions
Using Remote Desktop to get a graphical Linux desktop
Running VS (Visual Studio) Code, an integrated development environment (IDE) on your personal machine, with VS Code connecting to an SCF machine to do remote development.
You can copy files to and from the SCF filesystem in a variety of ways.
What machines can I use?¶
You can browse the list of the SCF computers on our
Grafana dashboards (SCF login required), including a
general
overview
of most machines. Once you are on an SCF machine run sitehosts compute to
list machines you can remotely connect to and run jobs on.
Running graphical programs from an SCF machine¶
You can remotely run GUI-based programs on the SCF machines, displaying the GUI on your local machine. These instructions will tell you how to view such programs on your own Windows or Mac machine.
Note that our JupyterHub provides more responsive access to RStudio and VS Code sessions, and Remote Desktop may be a better option for displaying GUIs.
Other ways to access the SCF filesystem¶
Copying files using tools such as SFTP, SCP, rsync and Globus can be tedious and requires you to have to deal with the possibility of different file versions on your personal computer and on the SCF filesystem.
You can mount your SCF home directory as a directory on your personal machine (available for any of Windows, MacOS, or Linux).
If you have a Mac or Linux desktop that you keep in your Evans office, the SCF can administer that computer for you. In this case, you will have direct access to your home directory, mounted via NFS, as for all SCF machines. Please email us if you are interested in this.