Remote login via SSH

Prerequisites

To connect to a computer in the FIM PC labs, you first need a connection to the university network — either directly on-campus, or via the university VPN if you are using it externally, for example from home. The VPN software and corresponding instructions can be found on the VPN page of the Centre of Information Technology and Media Services (ZIM). You will also need OpenSSH, which is pre-installed on Windows 10 and current versions of macOS and many Linux distributions.

For an overview of the hostnames of all currently available pool computers, please visit the website ciphosts.fim.uni-passau.de.

Connecting

First open your terminal application. The pre-installed Terminal application is called either "Command Prompt" (Windows, see the following picture), "Terminal.app" (macOS, located in the Programs folder in the Utilities subfolder) or "Terminal" or "Konsole" (Linux).

To establish an SSH connection, enter the following command in your terminal:
ssh username@computer.fim.uni-passau.de
Replace "username" with your own FIM username and "computer" with the name of the computer you want to log on to. Then start the command by pressing Enter.

The first time you log on to a machine, SSH will ask you to confirm the host key of that machine to ensure the security of future connections. You can confirm this question by entering "yes".

Now you will be asked for your password for the login. When entering the password, no placeholder symbols (i.e. no "*" or similar) are displayed. When you have entered your password, confirm again with Enter.

After successful login you will see a short message followed by the command prompt of the target computer.

Disconnecting

If you want to end the connection, enter the command "exit". After that you will end up in the shell of your own computer again, which you can also terminate with "exit". When you disconnect, all your background processes are terminated (see "Can I keep programs running after logout?").