Remote Login Options

Much of our work is done on servers which sit up in the lab and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Follow the instructions below to access them.

X11 Forwarding

Easy Way

Install the free version of MobaXterm. This takes care of the ssh connection to our servers as well as running the local Xserver without any setup. It also makes it easy to download files from or upload files to the server.

Traditional Way

Install:

Xming
Putty

In Putty, options select SSH->X11 and enable X11 forwarding. Also for Cadence to look pretty, you should install the fonts for Xming (a separate download), and then restart Xming before continuing.

VNC Server

vncserver -geometry 1920x1200 -depth 24 :22

Instead of 1920x1200 you can put in the resolution of your particular desktop / laptop / tablet (really?). The :22 at the end specifies which port you want to create the vnc connection on, in this case port 5922. Change this to some other unique number (<100) so that you don't wind up with a randomly assigned number based on how many other people have VNC sessions at the moment.

You should connect to VNC through an encrypted tunnel in order to prevent your raw screen images from being sent over the internet. Different ssh tools handle this differently, but for example the way to do it on the command line is:

ssh username@server.eecs.umich.edu -L 5902:localhost:5922

This creates an encrypted tunnel between port 5902 on your computer and port 5922 on the remote server (which you will access VNC through). Then when you use your VNC Viewer, simply connect to "localhost:5902" (or whatever port you chose), and it will securely patch you through to the server.

In order to change the resolution of the vnc server without killing it, use the following steps:

1. Add the following line to your ~/.cshrc set path=(/opt/TigerVNC/bin $path)
2. Run vncserver as normal
3. Run xrandr to get a list of supported resolutions
4. Run xrandr -s 1280x800 to change the resolution (eg. to 1280x800).

To kill the vnc server

vncserver -kill :22

Instead of "22" put in the number of the server that was assigned to you when you started it.

Your configuration files (including the file containing your VNC password) are located in uniquename/.vnc and uniquename/.vnc-cds. You can remove all files from these folders without messing up your VNC (although it will reset your settings).

Options for SSH

If you don't need X11 forwarding, another interesting option for making the SSH connection is the SSH App in the chrome web store. It has a relatively simple interface, but the ability to add command line arguments is still there. It also shows up wherever you log into chrome, which can be nice.

Server List

• oakland.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 5)
• cass.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 5)
• manistee.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 6)
• delta.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 6)
• kalamazoo.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 6)
• hamilton.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 6)
• waterloo.eecs.umich.edu (RHEL 6)