SSH Authentication

For the authentication, you can

• use password-based or ssh-key-based authentication as a user from Paderborn University.

  • We recommend ssh-key-based authentication with password-protected ssh-keys.

• As an external user, you can only use ssh-key-based authentication due to security considerations.

  • If you have not yet deposited a key, please send us the public key of your SSH keyring to pc2-support@uni-paderborn.de. We can then install it for you.

Instruction on how to create an ssh-key can be found at hpc wiki. Only keys that are password-protected are allowed to be used in the context of PC² cluster systems.

System-Specific Access

Both, Noctua 1 and Noctua 2 provide a jump host which provides load balancing across the front end nodes of each cluster.

Noctua 1

The Jump-Host for Noctua 1 is fe.noctua1.pc2.uni-paderborn.de. Port 22 (SSH).

Interactive Sessions

We recommend the following combined command for an interactive session (replace USERNAME with your lowercase username):

Alternatively, you can put

in your ~/.ssh/config and replace [USERNAME] with your username on Noctua and [PATH TO PRIVATE KEY] with the path to your private key of your ssh-key. Then you can use the short command ssh noctua to connect to Noctua. You will be asked for the password of your ssh-key when logging in instead of your user password.

If you want to connect to the last connected frontend, then use this command:

If you need to a run graphical application, the -X option should be used, which enables X11 forwarding with X11 SECURITY extension. The complete command is

Noctua 2

The configuration for Noctua 2 ist quite similar to Noctua 1, except for the hostnames. The Jump-Host for Noctua 2 is fe.noctua2.pc2.uni-paderborn.de. Port 22 (SSH).

Interactive Sessions

We recommend the following combined command for an interactive session (replace USERNAME with your lowercase username):

Alternatively, you can put

in your ~/.ssh/config and replace [USERNAME] with your username on Noctua and [PATH TO PRIVATE KEY] with the path to your private key of your ssh-key. Then you can use the short command ssh noctua2 to connect to Noctua 2. You will be asked for the password of your ssh-key when logging in instead of your user password.

If you want to connect to the last connected frontend, then use this command:

If you need to a run graphical application, the -X option should be used, which enables X11 forwarding with X11 SECURITY extension. The complete command is