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2024

Using VSCode for Jupyter Notebooks

VSCode is an extensible code editing software that can connect to remote systems like Derecho and Casper. Intellisense, Jupyter, and other extensions gives you options to keep the editor as lightweight or complex as you prefer. Additional quality of life features like GUI file transfers, a terminal window, and local or remote Jupyter notebook execution make VSCode an appealing editor for use with NCAR systems.

Unique bash history on different HPC resources

NCAR's HPC resource share a common home files system, which greatly simplifies working across systems. One slight annoyance I noted with this setup, however, is a common bash history across all machines. While the commands I usually run on Casper and Derecho are very similar, they are not identical. Fortunately, bash allows its history behavior to be customized easily, and with just a little effort we can get HPC resource-specific history implementations.

Streamlining two-factor authentication with ssh

Do you tire of responding to Duo pushes every single time you log in to NCAR's HPC resources? While two-factor authentication (2FA) is a hard requirement for user access, there are techniques for "sharing" authentication, allowing multiple ssh or scp processes to reuse a pre-established connection. This technique uses the ControlPath and ControlMaster functionality built in to ssh and requires some straightforward local configuration.