Remote access to the UCSB computing labs (and some SSH tricks)

First time setup

• Create a College of Engineering (CoE) account at this link: https://eci.ucsb.edu/account-creation-links
• If you have any issues with your account or if you forget your password, go back to the link above.

Logging in thorough SSH

(This section assumes you have some experience using Powershell/the terminal/the command line.)

1. Log in with ssh <your COE username>@csil.cs.ucsb.edu.
2. You will be prompted for your password - this is your CoE password created above.

Adding a public/private key pair for CSIL

Adding a key pair allows you to avoid entering a password every time you log in to CSIL.

1. Create a key pair with ssh-keygen.
2. Follow the prompts to save the keypair and add a password to the file (not required if you're on a personal computer, recommended on a shared computer).
3. Navigate to the location of the keypair and copy ONLY the public key to CSIL using the command scp <path/to/file> <COE username>@csil.cs.ucsb.edu:~/.ssh/authorized_keys
4. Enter your password when prompted.

If all has gone well, you should now be able to log in to CSIL without a password.

note: You can do this on any remote server, just replace <COE username> with your username on that server and "csil.cs.ucsb.edu" with the public IP for that server.

Adding an alias for CSIL

If you want to type even less, try setting up an alias for CSIL:

1. Open/create a file named config in the SSH folder.
2. Linux or Mac: Located at ~.ssh/config
3. Windows: Located at %userprofile%\.ssh\config
4. Add to the file:

Host <nickname>
Hostname csil.cs.ucsb.edu
User <your COE username>
IdentityFile <path to your private key>

note: You can do this multiple times to add additional servers!

1. Save the file.

2. Test it by running ssh <nickname> on the command line. You should now be connected to CSIL.