COMP3000 Operating Systems F23: Connecting to SCS Openstack

If you want to access the openstack environment during a video call (or when watching a movie online), please do not leave the Carleton VPN connected. You may also want to avoid your personal online activities going through the VPN or just simply need more convenience. Here are some alternative options. The instructions below assume you have created your VM instance with the VPN. Remember to replace <***> with your actual values.

You need to ssh to your VM instance to do the tutorials. Windows 10/11, Ubuntu and MacOS all have SSH clients available from their command lines. Just type "ssh student@<IP address>" where the IP address is the floating IP address you assigned to your VM. Other tools supporting SSH (e.g., PuTTY) also work. Once you are prompted to log in, the default user is student, default password is student. You'll have to change your password once you are first logged in. (If you want to change your password later, use the passwd command.)

For alternative ways to access your instance, proceed to the options below.

ProxyJump

ssh -J <CarletonUserName>@access.scs.carleton.ca <VMUserName>@<VMIP>

This above is the easy and recommended way. If your ssh version is a bit old, you may need to add a key exchange algorithm with:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 -J <CarletonUserName>@access.scs.carleton.ca <VMUserName>@<VMIP>

ProxyJump - persistent

In your ssh config file (e.g., ~/.ssh/config for Linux and C:\Users\<UserName>\.ssh\config for Windows 10/11):

Host access
HostName access.scs.carleton.ca
KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
User <CarletonUserName>
Host 134.117.*
ProxyJump access
User <VMUserName>

Then you can just ssh <VMIP>.

Windows (older versions)

ssh -o ProxyCommand="C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe -W %h:%p <CarletonUserName>@access.scs.carleton.ca" <VMUserName>@<VMIP>

Legacy (two terminal windows needed, not recommended)

ssh -L 1200:<VMIP>:22 <CarletonUserName>@access.scs.carleton.ca

[stay logged in, and in another window do the following]

ssh -p 1200 <VMUserName>@localhost

You can choose a port other than 1200.

If you do need GUI access in certain cases

x2go also uses the same protocol as ssh but provides remote desktop access (which technically runs an X server on your PC). Avoid using x2go unless really needed (as it is slow due to the amount of data to transfer).

Our SCS Openstack VM has already been shipped with the server-side of x2go, so just follow the instructions here to set it up on your PC client.