Linux SSH Access

All Linux servers in CS run an SSH server on port 22. Anyone with a CS account may log into these servers.

Update 07/29/19 We are now blocking SSH traffic for connections from outside of the UVA network. This means that you are no longer able to SSH directly into CS hosts from outside of UVA. However connections to portal.cs.virginia.edu are still allowed from outside of UVA.

If you are outside of the UVA network (off grounds) then you can use the UVA VPN to access CS servers via SSH.

If you need to access CS servers from outside of UVA you can SSH directly into portal.cs.virginia.edu without having to use the VPN. Once you are logged into the portal cluster, you can then access other CS servers via SSH.

[ktm5j@outside-uva ~]$ ssh -l ktm5j power3.cs.virginia.edu

^C                                                     <-- Direct ssh access to power3 is denied
[ktm5j@outside-uva ~]$ ssh -l ktm5j portal.cs.virginia.edu
ktm5j@portal.cs.virginia.edu's password: 
Last login: Mon Jul 29 14:12:10 2019
ktm5j@portal04 ~ $ hostname
portal04                                               <-- We are logged into portal cluster
ktm5j@portal04 ~ $ ssh power3                          <-- We can now access power3
ktm5j@power3's password:
....
ktm5j@power3 ~ $

The OpenSSH ssh client has an option -J to specify a host to use as a “jumphost” that lets us access other servers inside of a firewalled network. This combines two steps from the example above (ssh into portal.cs.virginia.edu and then ssh to power3) into one single command. From the manpages:

     -J destination
             Connect to the target host by first making a ssh connection to
             the jump host described by destination and then establishing a
             TCP forwarding to the ultimate destination from there.  Multiple
             jump hops may be specified separated by comma characters.  This
             is a shortcut to specify a ProxyJump configuration directive.
             Note that configuration directives supplied on the command-line
             generally apply to the destination host and not any specified
             jump hosts.  Use ~/.ssh/config to specify configuration for jump
             hosts.

Here is how we use this option to “jump” from portal.cs to another CS server. Let's repeat the example of logging in to power3

[ktm5j@outside-uva ~]$ ssh -l ktm5j power3 -J portal.cs.virginia.edu
ktm5j@portal04.cs.virginia.edu's password:                            <-- first asked to authenticate to portal
ktm5j@power3's password:                                              <-- immediately able to log into power3
....
ktm5j@power3 ~ $

This process can be made even easier with the use of password-less ssh keys. When keys are set up properly you can log in (even using the -J jumphost options) without needing to type in a password.

Computer Science hosts its own DNS server with authority over the cs.virginia.edu domain space. Any server in CS will have a fully qualified domain name (fqdn) of hostname.cs.virginia.edu.

If you want to log into a server named gpusrv04, then the domain address should be gpusrv04.cs.virginia.edu.

If you are inside of the Computer Science network then you can simply use the hostname of a server instead of its fully qualified name. For example, if you are logged into a CS server, you can ping another server by its hostname alone.

username@power5:~$ ping power3
PING power3.cs.virginia.edu (128.143.67.43) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from power3.cs.virginia.edu (128.143.67.43): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.149 ms
64 bytes from power3.cs.virginia.edu (128.143.67.43): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.123 ms

This will not work from outside of the CS network unless you modify your DNS search path to contain cs.virginia.edu.

To log into this server from another computer running Linux/Unix/MacOS, run the following from a shell:

username@host ~ $ ssh username@gpusrv04.cs.virginia.edu
username@gpusrv04's password:                              <- Enter Password
...
[username@gpusrv04 ~]$

In Mac OS the Terminal app can be found in the Utilities folder under Applications.

For information about SSH clients for Windows, see the article SSH from Windows

For a listing of generally available servers in CS, see the article General Purpose Nodes

Here in CS we want to give all of our users fair and equal access to whatever computing resources we have to offer. For this reason we are discontinuing the practice of restricting login access to certain servers. However, there are a number of servers that still have access restrictions in place. This article is to show users with sudo privileges how to edit /etc/security/time.conf to allow user logins.

There are several configuration files located in /etc/security on Linux servers. In this directory, we can use time.conf to restrict ssh login to a specific set of user accounts.

This section can be skipped over if your server has already been configured with login restrictions.

By default, access rules in time.conf are not used unless a PAM module (pluggable authentication module) is configured to read them. This is done by adding a line to the sshd PAM module file.

Add the following line to the file to the end /etc/pam.d/sshd:

account             required                pam_time.so

Now that PAM is configured to read time.conf we can now put in a rule. Here is an example rule from time.conf:

sshd;*;!root&fls4t&ejs3s&pgh5a;!Al0000-2400

This line is formatted such that the users listed are separated by ampersand & characters. This entry will allow the users root, fls4t, ejs3s and pgh5a are allowed access. Be sure to always include yourself and root in this rule. Failure to do so may result in everyone becoming locked out.

If we wanted to add the user ktm5j to this rule above, we would insert the string &ktm5j like this:

sshd;*;!root&fls4t&ejs3s&pgh5a&ktm5j;!Al0000-2400

Changes to this file take effect immediately, no services need to be restarted. When editing this file, be sure that you keep at least one active ssh connection until you have tested your changes. This will prevent becoming locked out if any errors are made!