Logging In & Transferring Files

How do I access Talon 2.0?

 

Requirements:

  1. To connect you must be on the UNT network including Eaglenet (wi-fi) and the Campus Virtual Private Network (VPN).
  2. You must use a Secure Shell (SSH) version 2 connection.

To connect from Linux or MacOS: If you are logging from a Linux machine, make sure it has an SSH client (ssh, openssh, etc.) installed. Then, access Talon 2 by opening the Terminal application and using the command:

 

To connect from Windows: You'll first need a terminal application and here are two options.

  • PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham
  • Cygwin/X provides an all-in-one, UNIX like environment. It comes with SSH support as a package. The installation is straightforward. During the installation, you will need to select the *Net* package. By default, SSH is NOT installed. If you are familiar with UNIX, then you can work within Cygwin/X using UNIX commands as if you were on a Linux box.

To connecting from off campus: If you are off campus you may connect using the Campus VPN. Connecting to the VPN is outside the scope of this document, please consult this Campus VPN guide or the IT Services's Remote Access to Campus Computers (RDP).  Should you require further assistance, please contact the Help Desk.

Where do I login?

Primary login: talon2.acs.unt.edu is for standard text based UNIX command-line login. There is no X11 Forwarding capable on this server. Also this is where you home directories (/home) physically reside. You should NEVER run compute intensive processes on this login node as there are regularly 30-40 users logged in simultaneously. Please use the queuing system for jobs or to compile code.

Visualization login: There are 3 nodes which have X11 capabilities and are UGE submission hosts.  This host are intended for using the graphical based software (e.g. gnuplot, matplotlib) and other notebook features in software like MatLab and Mathematica.  Please submit all compute intensive jobs through the queuing system.  Each X11 session normally ties up an entire CPU, therefore you may want to try another vis-login if you are experiencing slow ups.  Also, X11 graphical sessions require large bandwidth to work effectively, and you may experience lag while on home DSL or Cable ISP. Login at: vis-01.acs.unt.edu, vis-02.acs.unt.edu, vis-03.acs.unt.edu.  Currently your files in /home and /storage/remote or /storage/research are all mounted through the internal cluster network to the vis-login.

Storage login: You can directly access the network attached storage (NAS appliance) hpc-01.acs.unt.edu via an SFTP client.  The directory space /storage/remote and /storage/research are physically connected to the Research SAN, while /home is network mounted from talon2.  For more on this storage see the "Alternative Storage" description.

How do I change my password?

To change your password follow these steps:

$ passwd
  1. With a termainal application, log into talon2.acs.unt.edu or other login nodes using your password.
  2. At the prompt, use the command:
  3. Follow the prompts until completion and you receive the "Password successfully updated" message.
  • if you are changing your password as part of the log on procedure, the log on procedure will continue now.
  • if anything goes wrong (for instance, when you entered the password twice, there was a mismatch), you will be notified, and the password will remain unchanged. You may be given the option of trying again
  • if all went well, your new password is now in effect, and your old password will no longer work.

How do I transfer files?

Texted based command-line option:

To transfer files to and from a cluster on a Linux/Mac machine, you may use the "terminal" application and the secure copy (scp) command or secure file transfer protocol (sftp). The following is an example of uploading a file foo.f to talon2.acs.unt.edu from your machine myhost:

myhost$ scp foo.f talon2.acs.unt.edu:

For another example, to recursively copy an entire directory foo from inside directory project in your home directory on talon2.acs.unt.edu to the current working directory (aka ".") on myhost, use the following command:

myhost$ scp -rp talon2.acs.unt.edu:project/foo .

 

Graphical inteface option:

From a Windows or Mac machine you MUST have an SFTP client software such as WinSCP or Cyberduck installed. Once logged in, you can use the file transfer window within the program to drag and drop files between local and remote (talon2) machines.