These are the instructions on how to install and configure your Teleport SSH access on Windows 10 and 11 using MobaXterm to connect to ECMWF services such as the Atos HPCF and ECS services.

Check the following pages if you are using another Windows method:

Teleport SSH Access - Windows Terminal and Powershell configuration

Teleport SSH Access - Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

Teleport SSH Access - Windows Cygwin configuration

Table of Contents

Demo

Here is a demonstration on how to set up Teleport to connect to our our Atos HPCF from your terminal on a Windows 10 or 11. You can find the step by step guide described 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 make sure you download the "tsh client" instead of "Teleport Connect" for Windows.

You will need to extract the zip file and put the "tsh.exe" executable somewhere in your PATH. The easiest way to do this is to:

  1. Open the zip file in your file browser
  2. Drag the teleport folder inside the file and drop into the directory of your choice (the main directory for your user, for example)

  3. Open MobaXterm and start a local terminal. 

  4. Add to the PATH variable the location of the teleport directory. For example, if you dropped it on your main user directory (C:\Users\yourwindowsuser):

    echo 'export PATH=/drives/c/Users/yourwindowsuser/teleport:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Please be aware that you must use a version of "tsh" equal to or lower than 13. We are working on removing this limitation in the very near future

Authenticating yourself

The following commands need to be run on a MobaXterm local terminal

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.

Existing sessions

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

Browserless authentication

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

Subsequent logins

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 in your MobaXterm local terminal 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.

SSH config snippet
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

Not sure about username and email?

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  

VSCode and Remote SSH

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

Now you should make the tsh internal directory where SSH certificates are generated visible within MobaXterm running the following command on a MobaXterm local terminal:

ln -s /drives/c/Users/yourwindowsuser/.tsh ~/

SSH connection

The following commands need to be run on a MobaXterm local terminal

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.

tsh login every 12 hours

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

tsh login

Troubleshooting

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 --proxy=jump.ecmwf.int
ssh -V
ssh -v ecs-login

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