Remote System Access

Accessing the cluster

• To access PARAM Shakti you need to “ssh” the login server.
• The login node is primary gateway to the rest of the cluster, which has a job scheduler (called Slurm). You may submit jobs to the queue and they will run when the required resources are available.
• Please do not run programs directly on login node. Login node is use to submit jobs, transfer data and to compile source code. (If your compilation takes more than a few minutes, you should submit the compilation job into the queue to be run on the cluster.)
• By default, two directories are available (i.e. /home and /scratch). These directories are available on login node as well as the other nodes on the cluster. /scratch is for temporary data storage, generally used to store data required for running jobs.

Remote access from Windows Desktop

PuTTY is the most popular open source “ssh” client application for Windows, you can Download it from (http://www.putty.org/). Once installed, find the PuTTY application shortcut in your Start Menu, desktop. On clicking the PuTTY icon The PuTTY Configuration dialog should appear. Locate the “Host Name or IP Address” input Field in the PuTTY Configuration screen. Enter the user name along with IP address or Hostname with which you wish to connect.

(e.g. [  username]@paramshakti.iitkgp.ac.in)

Enter your password when prompted, and press Enter.

Remote access from Linux Desktop

Both Mac and Linux systems provide a built-in SSH client, so there is no need to install any additional package. Open the terminal, connect to an SSH server by typing the following command: 

ssh [username]@[hostname] 

For example, to connect to the PARAM Shakti Login Node, with the username

user1: ssh user1@paramshakti.iitkgp.ac.in

You will be prompted for a password, and then will be connected to the server.

Remote access of cluster from outside of IIT Kharagpur campus

Latest Windows 10 Desktop, Linux and Mac systems provide a built-in SSH client, so there is no need to install any additional package. Open the terminal and provide the port number “4422” in  ssh command line  .

ssh –p [port_no] [username]@[hostname] 

For example, to connect to the PARAM Shakti Login Node, with the username

user1: ssh –p 4422 user1@paramshakti.iitkgp.ac.in

You will be prompted for a password, and then will be connected to the server.

If you get kex_exchange_identification error use additional flag  "-o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null" in ssh command line .

user1: ssh –p 4422 -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null  user1@paramshakti.iitkgp.ac.in

First login

• Whenever the newly created user on PARAM Shakti tries to login with the user Id and password (temporary, system generated) provided over the Email through PARAM Shakti support, he/she will next be prompted to create a “new password” of their choice which will change the temporary, system generated password.
• It is recommended that you have a strong password which contains the combination of alphabets (lower case / upper case), numbers, and a few special characters that you can easily remember.

Given next is a screenshot that describes the scenario for “first login”

How to change the user password?

Use the passwd command to change the password for the user from login node.

Enter the new Password you want to set.

Forgot Password?

Please raise a ticket regarding this issue under  User Support  and the system administrator will resolve your problem.  

Job submission procedure

User's home directory is primarily used to keep the users' compiled software, scripts, etc. When the user want to submit jobs, all input files along with scripts must be copied to $SCRATCH and submit the jobs from there. Users can navigate to $SCRATCH usig the command "cd $SCRATCH"  

Login Tools

Putty(Windows installable application):

It is a third party freely available tool which can be used to access the HPC system and transfer file to PARAM Shakti system through your local systems (laptop/desktop). Link to download this tool:   https://www.putty.org/

Command Prompt (Windows native application):

SSH is available now as a native tool for Windows-10 machine which can be used to login to PARAM Shakti system through your local systems (laptop/desktop).

Command Prompt (Linux native application):

This is a native tool for all Unix/Linux machine which can be used to login to PARAM Shakti system through your local systems (laptop/desktop).Please use ssh command option “-o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null” to avoid the SSH key error.