Data Science Lab

• Physical Lab Access (XXXX)
• Web Access (This Wiki Page and the Zeppelin workbook)
• SSH access (terminal access)

Accounts must be assigned before you can access the system. You must request an account from the local system administrator. To ensure and validate your account you must login using a text terminal (see SSH Access below).

Once you have been assigned an account and temporary password, follow these directions to set your new password.

1. Connect to the Data Science Lap network via desktop/notebook.
2. Log into the cluster using a text terminal and secure shell (see SSH Access below)
3. Use the account and temporary password sent to you via email
4. You will be asked to choose a new password.
5. Once a new password is accepted, the system will automatically log you out and you must log back in with your new password as you did in step 2 above.)

PASSWORDS ARE VALID FOR 90 DAYS. You will be required to provide a new password to log into the system.

Account names can be the same as campus-wide accounts, however, authentication (passwords) for the DSL cluster (dsl.saintpeters.edu) are unique and will only work for ssh and the Zeppelin notebook .

Once you have a valid account and password (not the temporary password) you can login into any workstation in the Data Science Lab in Pope 211. The files under your account will be available on all the workstations in the lab. For instance, you can work on Limulus3 one day and return to the lab later and use Limulus6 (or login over the campus network) and the same files (in the same state) will be available for you.

The system can be accessed using http (web browser) to read this documentation. Connect to:

http://dsl.saintpeters.edu

Web access to the Zeppelin Notebook is available from the following URL:

https://dsl.saintpeters.edu:8443

A valid DSL cluster account is required to use the Zeppelin notebook. Zeppelin is web based notebook for doing Spark, Hive, Python, and R programming. There are several tutorials available. You must clone the tutorial notebooks to use them. Once cloned, click the small lock icon in the upper corner or a notebook to set permissions. See Use the Zeppelin Notebook for further information.

Student access to the cluster is available when connected to the campus-wide network. This access is based on command-line Linux tools. To access the cluster in a secure fashion you will need a Secure Shell (SSH) client on your laptop or desktop computer.

SSH is a command line tool for terminal access to a remote computer systems. You will need an SSH Client to access the cluster via SSH. If you are using Windows, you will need to install either (both are free) https://www.putty.org/ PuTTY or https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ MobaXterm. Mac and Linux come with an SSH client already installed.

If you are on the internal campus Saint Peters network, you can access the cluster using SSH by entering the following in a terminal window:

ssh USERNAME@dsl.saintpeters.edu

USERNAME is your account user name on the cluster. This connection will place you on the main server. Once you are logged into the main server (now called “dsl”) use SSH to move to a specific server. For example, once logged-in to the main system (named dsl) you can move to any other system in the cluster. These include limulus2, limulus3, limulus4, limulus5, limulus6, limulus7-TF, limulus8-TF and limulus9-TF. For example:

ssh USERNAME@limulus3

External SSH access is no longer available unless you are connected to the Saint Peters VPN (Virtual Private Network). If you are connected to the Saint Peters VPN use the Campus-wide instructions above.