Off-campus

To connect via SSH from off-campus you must do one of the following:

  • setup a VPN connection, and then connect to the cluster directly. We recommend installing the GlobalProtect VPN client on your workstation or laptop. A VPN is also needed to use MyAdroit, MyDella, MyStellar or MyTiger. Make sure that you are using a Princeton University VPN and not the VPN of another institution.
  • ssh to <YourNetID>@tigressgateway.princeton.edu and then ssh to the cluster. A VPN connection is not required for this approach. You must have an account on one of the large clusters (Della, Stellar, Tiger) to do this.

If you don't do one of the above then you may see an error message like Connection closed by remote host or Operation timed out. If you see Permission denied (publickey,keyboard-interactive) it means that you don't have an account (see this page).

If you are connecting via VPN then make sure that you are using a Princeton VPN and not one for another institution.

Visit https://myip.rc.princeton.edu to see your IP address and for troubleshooting tips.

 

On-campus

To SSH to one of the Research Computing clusters you must either be on the campus wired network or connected to the eduroam wireless network. You cannot log in to any of the clusters while connected via the puvisitor wireless network, servicenet or a network specific to your research group.

If you are using eduroam, make sure that you are using your Princeton credentials and not those for another institution.

Visit https://myip.rc.princeton.edu to see your IP address and for troubleshooting tips.

 

Too many authentication failures

For those with many ssh keys, you may receive the following error when trying to ssh into one of our clusters (especially when trying to connect to a cluster for the first time):

Received disconnect from UNKNOWN port 65535:2: Too many authentication failures
Disconnected from UNKNOWN port 65535.

This error occurs because, by default, ssh tries to authenticate with all your ssh keys before letting you type a password, and if you have enough ssh keys you will have too many authentication failures before you ever get the chance to type a password. In this case you need to temporarily disable the use of ssh keys when connecting to the target cluster using one of the three following commands:

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no username@server

ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=keyboard-interactive username@server

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=invalid ssh username@server

Once you've connected to a cluster/server for the first time, you can add your ssh key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote system and modify your local ~/.ssh/config to make sure you connect with the proper ssh key. For example:

Host <hostname>
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<ssh-key>

  This should allow you to connect to the cluster without having to disable ssh key authorization.