Once you have been issued a username and credentials to login to the BIC systems:
- The only way you can initiate a login session to the BIC is by using a secure, encrypted SSHsession.
- External access connection host is called login.bic.mni.mcgill.ca.
- This host acts as a login gateway. No other hosts at the BIC permit external logins.
- Secured copy (scp) or secured FTP (sftp) and rsync access are available too to transfer data in bulk.
- While logged inside the BIC, all workstations and some of the core servers can be accessed using a SSH connection.
- Note that all data servers have restricted access.
- As for workstations, SSH connections from McGill subnets at large, McGill wireless and of course the BIC DHCP subnet are allowed.
- Security against multiple login probe attempts (username harvesting by spammers and phishers) is enforced via PAM modules and fail2ban.
- Careful with Fat Fingers: if you fail to type in a valid password, after the 3rd failed attempts in a time span of 10 minutes, the IP address from your incoming connection will be blackholed for 10 minutes.
- This is also true for logins to login.bic.mni.mcgill.ca.
- Read the following to learn how to use ssh-keygen to generate a new SSH key: What is ssh-keygen & How to Use It to Generate a New SSH Key?
If you would like to connect to your personal workstation from home or anywhere else for that matter, we support the use of X2GO at http://wiki.x2go.org, while using login.bic.mni.mcgill.ca as a proxy server. Click here for more info on How To Login to a Workstation. Note that you cannot connect to login.bic.mni.mcgill.ca directly while using X2GO.
Linux/MacOS
- For these platforms, SSH should be installed by default, so just start up a shell and type:
ssh MY_BIC_USERNAME@login.bic.mni.mcgill.ca
and replace MY_BIC_USERNAME by your BIC username.
- As noted above, we support the use of X2GO (for workstations only).
- For those who want/prefer the use of a commercial ($$$$) product go to http://www.ssh.com/support/ and have your wallet ready.
Windows
- Use PuTTY http://www.putty.org. PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed for the Windows platform. PuTTY is open source software.
- x2go as well (for workstations only) - see links above.
- One can also use Cygwin.
- Another Free SSH Client for Windows Free SSH Client for Windows :: WinSCP.
- A fast cross-platform FTP client - provides sftp but no ssh client FileZilla® download | SourceForge.net.
Web browser (Google Chrome only)
One can also run a ssh client inside a web browser - one is available for Google Chrome.
goto Chrome Web Store
type ssh in the search box and it should show up as the first item … the rest and very point-and-clicky …
The client provides an xterm-compatible terminal emulator and stand-alone SSH client. It uses Native-Client to connect directly to ssh servers without the need for external proxies.