SSH access to clusters with multiple accounts#
Our main SSH access documentation describes the configuration for a single account but when working in multiple projects, users also have multiple accounts.
Separate key pairs for different hosts
Create separate SSH key pairs on each host you want to use to access the HPC systems, best with separate passphrases. Multiple hosts that share the $HOME
file can be seen as a single host.
See SSH for information about SSH key pairs.
SSH client-side configuration file
The client-side configuration file for SSH is .ssh/config
in your home directory.
On this page, we use $HOME/.ssh/config
to reflect that.
Template for two accounts but more are possible. Adjust <cluster>
and <account*>
for your needs:
# Account 1
Host <cluster>-<account1>
HostName <cluster>.nhr.fau.de
ProxyJump csnhr-<account1>
User <account1>
IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_nhr_fau_<account1>
IdentitiesOnly yes
PasswordAuthentication no
PreferredAuthentications publickey
ForwardX11 no
ForwardX11Trusted no
Host csnhr-<account1>
HostName csnhr.nhr.fau.de
User <account1>
IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_nhr_fau_<account1>
IdentitiesOnly yes
PasswordAuthentication no
PreferredAuthentications publickey
ForwardX11 no
ForwardX11Trusted no
# Account 2
Host <cluster>-<account2>
HostName <cluster>.nhr.fau.de
ProxyJump csnhr-<account2>
User <account2>
IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_nhr_fau_<account2>
IdentitiesOnly yes
PasswordAuthentication no
PreferredAuthentications publickey
ForwardX11 no
ForwardX11Trusted no
Host csnhr-<account2>
HostName csnhr.nhr.fau.de
User <account2>
IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_nhr_fau_<account2>
IdentitiesOnly yes
PasswordAuthentication no
PreferredAuthentications publickey
ForwardX11 no
ForwardX11Trusted no
With this configuration, you can choose the account when connecting:
andFor VS Code, new remote connection entries are required. At creation, it will offer
the different <cluster>-<account*>
entries for selection. For general information
about VS Code remote development, see here.