Logging In
To access synergy it is necessary to login with vpn prior to using ssh to connect.
Point your browser to the vpn address you were provided when you received your login credetials. Log in and follow the prompts to download the appropriate client for your OS.
You'll only have to do this once. Next time you can either use the client or your web browser and you'll be prompted to log in.
Note that some browsers may complain about the site not being secure. You can safely ignore this. In Chrome click on Advanced.
- Install the OpenVPN client
sudo apt-get install openvpn - Point your browser to the vpn address as above and again, you can ignore the security warnings.
- After you login, at the very bottom of the list of options, you see a link "Yourself (user-locked profile)".
Click to download and save it, making sure to take note of where you save it to.
- From the terminal type
sudo openvpn --config /path/to/client.ovpn. You'll see a bunch of messages flash by and it should end with something like "Initialization Sequence Completed". Leave this terminal running and start a new terminal which you can now use to login. - Pro tip: add the line
alias vpn='sudo openvpn --config /path/to/client.ovpn'to your.bashrcso you can just typevpnto start the vpn.
Once logged in to the vpn you can access the server via ssh using your provided credentials. To do this you'll need to use the command line.
On Mac you can use the Terminal program, however, on Windows you'll need to download Putty and setup a new ssh connection using your login details.
On Mac or Ubuntu in the Terminal app type:
ssh username@server.com
replacing with your provided login details and you'll be prompted for the password.
Now you should be logged in a ready to go!
In order to get your data uploaded and to download result files you'll need to use an ftp client. There are a number of clients with graphical interfaces if you'd like to use them. Cyberduck is a popular choice and is available for both Windows and Mac. FileZilla is another good option for Windows. However, you can also do this easily on the command line on Mac and Linux with the sftp command line client.
From your machine type:
sftp username@server.com
You'll now have a command prompt that looks something like this sftp> . Type help to get a list of commands you can run and exit to log off. When you are logged in with sftp you can easily transfer files. Use the put command to upload a file and get to download a file. sftp is nice because it allows you to browse the remote filesystem in case you can't remember the path to the file you'd like to download.
The scp (secure copy) and rsync command are also very useful for uploading and downloading files. Normally you would run these command from you local machine.
Upload a tarball from your local machine to your home directory on the server:
scp my_data.tgz username@server.com:~
Download a directory of result files from the server to your working directory:
scp -r username@server.com:~/path/to/results/ .
rsync is a very powerful tool most often used to synchronize two directories. There are plenty of tutorials online if you'd like more information on using both of these.