Category: Services

SMB/CIFS aka “Windows Filesharing”

We offer scratch space (temporary disk space) for EECS MSc students when they the need to store a big amount of data for a short period of time. For example for Deep Learning projects, a big dataset might not fit in the student’s home directory (please see quotas).

The scratch space is NFS-based, exported over the network to all student desktops and student Compute servers. That means that if you add some data from a student desktop into your folder in the scratch space, it will be available when you SSH into a server.

Available scratch spaces (Students only)

How to request it

MSc students can request scratch space from EECS Systems by raising a Helpdesk Ticket , providing the following infromation:

• Your Supervisor’s details
• Your EECS username (your ITL login)
• How much disk space you will require.

How to use it

The scratch disks are available under the ‘/import/’ folder from any EECS desktop/server . After the students request an additional scratch space, they will find a folder named after your EECS username and only they have access to that folder. The names and the status of the available scratch spaces are defined at the table bellow:

Staff/PhD disk quotas

We apply disk quotas (limitats) for all Staff and Students’ home directories, in order to ensure the fair usage of our Fileservers resources from all users in EECS.
As of September 2018, after moving all staff/PhD to the new fileserver quotas are enabled as below.

How to check

In Linux, you can use the quota command to display your current quota usage:

[-bash-4.1]$ quota -s
Disk quotas for user jdoe123 (uid 012345):
     Filesystem   space   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
gouda:            4500M*  4000M    5000M   30      215k    0       0 
/export/user10

Here’s a quick explanation of these numbers:

• space*: Your home directory is currently 4,4GB big. The asterisk * next to it means that you are exceeding the allocated ‘soft limit’ for your user, which is explained next.
• quota:  This is the ‘soft limit’ for your user. If you have exceeded that limit, you must clear some files from your home directory before the ‘grace period’ expires.
• limit: This is the ‘hard limit’. If you exceed that limit, you will not be able to create any new files. This will lead to a situation where you will not be able to log into a Linux desktop.
• grace: The grace period, before the end of which you must clear some files from your home directory, if you have exceeded your ‘soft limit’.
• files: The number of the files in your home directory.

If you have exceeded the allocated disk space (indicated by the small asterisk), read the FAQ page on how you can find any big files/folders to help you clean them up.

Staff and Research Students can (on request) use RDS via the Staff OpenVPN to run software on their own managed . Systems Support will enable the service on your PC and configure so that you, and only you, can log in to it remotely.

How to pretend your browser is on an EECS network

When all else fails, you can make an SSH tunnel from your home computer (call it C for “client”) to a computer on the School network (call it W). The idea is that you ask application software on C to connect to a port on itself; SSH is listening for this connection and forwards it to W. W, in turn, forwards the request to the server that you’d really like to talk to (call it S).

On your Linux or MacOS X box or Cygwin on Windows (i.e., whatever the “client” computer that you’re sitting in front of), type the following ssh command in an xterm or Terminal window:

 ssh -NfL 9000:S:port W

[ If you’re using one of the other Windows SSH programs, you can set up the port forwarding in the settings GUI]

‘W’ will typically be frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk (if you’re staff). ‘port’ will be the usual port for the service, e.g. 80 if it’s a web server you want to talk to. ‘S’ will be the server providing the service, e.g. tomcat-stu for the student Apache server, or qm-web.qmul.ac.uk for the College intranet.

Example

 ssh -NfL 9000:webprojects:80 frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk

makes a tunnel from your client computer to webprojects, via bert, after which the URL

 http://127.0.0.1:9000/

entered into the web browser on your client computer will show you tomcat-stu’s web server.

Example: how to pretend your browser is on an EECS network

You can tunnel to a web proxy wwwcache.eecs.qmul.ac.uk to cause your web browser’s requests to appear to come from the School networks. This is useful for some sites, eg The Apple Store for the National Higher Education Agreement.

 ssh -NfL 3128:wwwcache:3128 frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk

This makes a tunnel from localhost on port 3128 via bert to wwwcache.eecs.qmul.ac.uk:3128. Now all you need to do is point your browser’s proxy setting to localhost on port 3128, and you’ll be able to buy a MacBook for less.

SMB/CIFS aka “Windows Filesharing”

Using SMB with Linux

Recent Linux GNOME and KDE client desktops can understand smb:// URIs for drag-and-drop file transfer.

An older method is to use smbclient to transfer files to and from your home directory:

• Research/Staff: smbclient //frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/YOUR-USERNAME -U YOUR-USERNAME
• Students: smbclient //login.student.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/YOUR-USERNAME -U YOUR-USERNAME

Make sure that the following settings are added to the [global] section of your /etc/samba/smb.conf:

client min protocol = SMB3_02
client max protocol = SMB3_11

Using SMB with Mac OS X

Use the Finder‘s Go menu, and choose Connect To Server…. Enter one of the following URLs:

• staff: smb://frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/YOUR-USERNAME
• students: smb://bert.student.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/YOUR-USERNAME

NOTE: Only OS X Maverics or above are supported.

Using SMB with Windows

Right-click on My Computer and choose Map Network Drive. You will need to enter a path to the share:

• for staff: \\frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk\YOUR-USERNAME
• for students: \\bert.student.eecs.qmul.ac.uk\YOUR-USERNAME

NB. SMB traffic is restricted to the college networks. If you want to use it outside those networks please connect to the VPN first, or use SFTP.

For any issues or request with the service, please contact the IT Services: https://www.its.qmul.ac.uk/about/contact/ or raise a Helpdesk Ticket

ATTENTION: PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR PRIVATE KEYS ARE ENCRYPTED

follow this link to find for information to secure your keys, if you haven’t done so already, otherwise please read on, this guide will show you how to do that.
—————————————————————

Access to EECS Compute Servers is achieved with SSH-key authentication (known as passwordless authentication). Password-based access is not allowed, for security purposes, on the EECS compute servers.

Only the login-servers allow access using both the EECS password and SSH-key authentication.

SSH Keys

You will need to generate your SSH-key pair:

• A Private key, which will be located in your personal device and will be used for SSH connections.
• A Public key, which will be located on the remote server, in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. The public keys included in that file will be checked against the private key you are using to connect to the server.

From any Managed Desktop you can ssh into computer servers directly, given that you have setup your SSH keys according to the instructions as detailed bellow.

From self-managed devices or from outside the University, you have to log into the login-server and then ‘hop’ onto the compute servers. It is important to forward your SSH key in this case, so make sure that your SSH agent is forwarding from your personal device.

In the following step, you will generate the private-public key pair and copy the public key to the remote server. Select your OS from the tabs to show the guide:

• Windows
• Linux
• MacOS

$ vim .ssh/authorized_keys

[jdoe123@frank] $ ssh-add -L

ssh-keygen

$ ssh-keygen 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/harry/.ssh/id_rsa): 
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): ***********
Enter same passphrase again: ***********
Your identification has been saved in /home/harry/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/harry/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:dFLmbsDRF7c6accolFOxILVyyxPTCGshT55Uwn54FS8 harry@local-desktop
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 2048]----+
|      ..O+* =+.  |
|       B.%.Bo+ . |
|       .%.%oE o  |
|       ooXo= *   |
|        SoB * o  |
|         . + o   |
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
+----[SHA256]-----+

 
$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa EECS_USERNAME@LOGIN_SERVER

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa jdoe123@frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
$ ssh-add -L
$ ssh jdoe123@frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk -A

[jdo123@frank] $ ssh-add -L

SSH Agent Forwarding

NOTE: If you try to access an EECS Compute Server via a login-server,  you must enable your SSH agent forwarding. To do that on a terminal, append the ‘-A‘ flag at the end of the ssh command, for example:

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa jdoe123@frank.eecs.qmul.ac.uk -A

To confirm that your key is present when you SSH into the login server, type:

[jdoe123@frank] $ ssh-add -L

If your agent forwarding worked fine, the result will be the content of the Public key being used to authenticate against your Public key, for example:

[jdoe123@frank] $ ssh-add -L
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDYSaRizDUt87d8gh8sg78DGHGDGHd8hs87h8hd8sGnAHmYSLrnR4+4DxQH7agZXzgkb4ShlBbB5TfDDhYJMYBMPvjNW7HC8cgycfduNNz0sV1WbQ1GZ5phRw34THM8E6MPnhL/DbqQMe6DOA9+yegsgAQYHo9wE35BSa6hx6UmymuM+nn2M98CrJ /home/jdoe123/.ssh/id_rsa

If you see anything else like a ‘The agent has no identities.’ message, that means you did sth wrong, so read the previous instructions again, step by step.

Add ssh keys to server

Provided you have a QMUL IT account you can add your keys at https://support.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/ssh, if you do not please contact servicedesk@qmul.ac.uk with your public key for the EECS cluster and we will get back to you as quickly as possible.

Student printing is provided supported by QMUL IT Services.

General information on student printing can be found here.

To print from an EECS Student PC in the labs (ITL, Electronics Lab) :

• If you are on Windows, use the printers named konicacolour or konicabw
• If you are on Linux, use the printer named KONICA_RELEASE_ITL

To print from your own laptop/ device visit https://eprint.stu.qmul.ac.uk. Please log in with your QM account, i.e. the one you use for your e-mail. Further information on this service is provided here.

You will need to register your student card to be able to release jobs, as explained on this page.