These are the instructions on how to install and configure your Teleport SSH access on Linux to connect to ECMWF services such as the Atos HPCF and ECGATE services

Demo

Here is a demonstration on how to set up Teleport to connect to our our Atos HPCF on Ubuntu 22.04. You can find the step by step guide below.

Installing the `tsh` client

The tsh application is required to perform user authentication.

tsh is open source, very portable, and has minimal dependencies.

Go to the Teleport website and follow the instructions to install it. Typically, if you have administrator permissions on your computer you can install it with:

curl https://goteleport.com/static/install.sh | bash -s <teleport_version>

Click on "Alternative download options" where you may download and extract the corresponding tarball for your computer architecture, and place the tsh executable somewhere in your PATH

Authenticating yourself

Once every 12 hours, you will need to refresh your tokens with the tsh command. SSH connections may remain active for longer than 12 hours, but new connections will require re-authentication.

To authenticate yourself, run tsh, giving the location of our Teleport gateway:

tsh login --proxy=jump.ecmwf.int

Your default web browser will open. You should login with your email address, ECMWF password, and then the code from your Time-based One-Time-Password (TOTP) device or the 8-digit one-time passcode from your ActivIdentity (HID) security token if you have not configured your TOTP yet.

If you're already logged in to the ECMWF website, or have recently logged in to this service, the password prompt might be skipped.

If your computer does not have a browser or cannot display one, you may use the Teleport SSH access - Browserless Login Python Module for the authentication.

If the process is successful, you will see an output such as:

> Profile URL:        https://jump.ecmwf.int:443
  Logged in as:       user.address@somewhere.com
  Cluster:            jump.ecmwf.int
  Roles:              
  Logins:             ecmwfusername
  Kubernetes:         disabled
  Valid until:        2022-12-13 20:54:18 +0000 GMT [valid for 4h37m0s]
  Extensions:         permit-X11-forwarding, permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

Once you have logged int at least once, tsh will save your proxy settings so you can skip the extra argument next time:

tsh login

Setup your SSH config

We strongly recommend setting up all the SSH options needed for the connection instead of passing them on the command line.

Edit the file ~/.ssh/config on your computer and add the snippet below. You may create it if it does not exist. You should replace ecmwfusername by your registered ECMWF user and user.address@somewhere.com by your registered email address at ECMWF.

Host jump.ecmwf.int a?-* a??-* hpc-* hpc2020-* ecs-*
  User ecmwfusername 
  IdentityFile ~/.tsh/keys/jump.ecmwf.int/user.address@somewhere.com
  CertificateFile ~/.tsh/keys/jump.ecmwf.int/user.address@somewhere.com-ssh/jump.ecmwf.int-cert.pub
  HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa*,rsa-sha2-512
  PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa*
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  TCPKeepAlive yes

Host a?-* a??-* hpc-* hpc2020-* ecs-*
  ProxyJump jump.ecmwf.int

You can find the right values for those two parameters in the output of the tsh command:

% tsh login
> Profile URL: https://jump.ecmwf.int:443
Logged in as: user.address@somewhere.com
Cluster: jump.ecmwf.int
Roles:
Logins: ecmwfusername
Kubernetes: disabled
Valid until: 2022-12-13 20:54:18 +0000 GMT [valid for 3h56m0s]
Extensions: permit-X11-forwarding, permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

If you are using Visual Studio Code with the Remote SSH extension, it will not recognise hosts with wildcards as defined in the previous SSH config file.

You may add append an explicit entry for the desired hosts in your ssh config file:

Host ecs-login hpc-login

SSH connection

Once you have configured the appropriate settings, any SSH-based tools such as ssh, scp or rsync should work out of the box without any additional options.

To test the connection you may ssh into hpc-login if you have access to ECMWF's HPCF:

ssh hpc-login

Or alternatively, if you only have access to ECMWF ECS service:

ssh ecs-login

Visit our HPCF User Guide for further information.

Remember you may need to redo the authentication step for any new ssh connections after 12 hours with:

tsh login

Optional: Automating the authentication step

You may instruct ssh to trigger a tsh login whenever required when establishing a new connection by adding the following line at the top of your ~/.ssh/config

Match host jump.ecmwf.int exec "tsh status --proxy %h >/dev/null 2>&1 || tsh --proxy %h login"

Troubleshooting

ProxyJump keyword not available on old Linux versions

If using an Operating System with OpenSSH older than 7.3, you will not be able to use the ProxyJump feature. The typical error would be something like:

/home/user/.ssh/config: line 10: Bad configuration option: proxyjump

You must then replace the following line in your ~/.ssh/config

Host a?-* a??-* hpc-* hpc2020-* ecs-*
  ProxyJump jump.ecmwf.int

by:

Host a?-* a??-* hpc-* hpc2020-* ecs-*
  ProxyCommand /usr/bin/ssh -q -o PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-rsa* -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa*,rsa-sha2-512 -i ~/.tsh/keys/jump.ecmwf.int/user.address@somwhere.com -W %h:%p ecmwfusername@jump.ecmwf.int

You should replace ecmwfusername by your registered ECMWF user and user.address@somewhere.com by your registered email address at ECMWF.

If everything else fails...

If you cannot login to teleport or connect via SSH and you are not able to understand why, please raise an issue to our ECMWF Support portal and sending us the output of the commands:

tsh version
tsh login
ssh -V
ssh -v ecs-login

You should also include information about your computer (Operating system) to help us narrow down the problem.

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