Connecting to Alvis

OpenOnDemand

For this course we recommend using OpenOnDemand, but if you have your own installation of another SSH client that you prefer, you are welcome to use that. We will be using the command line only, so an SSH client like PuTTY would also work.

Logging in

OpenOnDemand

  • Put https://alvis.c3se.chalmers.se in browser address bar

  • Login through SUPR, with your SUPR credentials.

  • Put <your-c3se-username> and <your-c3se-password> in the login box

Other SSH client

If you prefer a different SSH client (terminal, etc.), you connect with either of

  • ssh -Y <user>@alvis1.c3se.chalmers.se

  • ssh -Y <user>@alvis2.c3se.chalmers.se

  • Put <your-c3se-username> where it says <user> and then the <user-c3se-password> when it asks for it.

Note

Alvis is accessible via SUNET networks (i.e. most Swedish university networks).

If you are not on one of those networks you need to use a VPN - preferrably your own Swedish university VPN. If this is not possible, contact support@chalmers.se and ask to be added to the Chalmers’s eduVPN.

Setting up Git

Git is already installed on Alvis, but you need to set your name and email globals unless you have already done this at some earlier time.

  • Open a terminal.
    • If you are using OpenOnDemand portal:
      • Go to the portal and authenticate through SUPR
      • In the menu at the top. Click “My Interactive Apps” → “Desktop Login” (since you do not need to start a job on a compute node to just run Git.
      • Pick either of the login nodes
      • Pick “Alvis remote desktop” and enter your <alvis username> and <alvis password>
      • When the desktop starts, in the top menu, choose “Applications” → “System” → “Xfce Terminal”.
  • Set your global name (change “Your Name”, do not include the prompt $): $ git config --global user.name "Your Name"
  • Set your global email (change the example, do not include the prompt): $ git config --global user.email "name@example.com"

You may also want to set your editor. We recommend nano, but other options are vim and emacs (or notepad on Windows).

  • $ git config --global core.editor nano

Testing your configuration

Create an example folder and cd into that, then create a file test.txt: 

$ mkdir <mydir> 
$ cd <mydir>
$ touch test.txt

Now initialize a repository and add the new file:

$ git init
$ git add test.txt

Now commit the change. The editor which you configured earlier should open. Add an example commit message:

$ git commit test.txt

Now let us look at the log:

$ git log

When you do git log, you should see something like: 

commit ff8b6f699d98c72d5cffc64d65a1c618b976b45a (HEAD -> master)
Author: Birgitte Brydsö <bbrydsoe@cs.umu.se>
Date:   Thu Sep 17 13:53:59 2020 +0200

    Test of git

but with name, email and commit message different.

If that is the case, your Git should be configured correctly.

Download the course materials

For the individual hands-on part of the course, we have created some course materials which you will download from either the course website, the course GitHub, or the “important information” page.

  • Course website: https://www.hpc2n.umu.se/events/courses/2025/git
  • Course GitHub: https://github.com/hpc2n/course-intro-git
    • Click the green button labeled “Code” for links to clone or download the materials.
    • Either do 1. CLONE or 2. DOWNLOAD, not both!
      • CLONE: Change to the directory where you wish to have the course material and clone with ‘git clone’ and the url:
        • git clone https://github.com/hpc2n/course-intro-git.git
        • You get the directory: course-intro-git
      • DOWNLOAD Zipfile: Please go to the terminal window where you have downloaded and set up Git. Change the directory to wherever you wish to have the course material.
        • Download the Zipfile and move it there. Can be done directly from the terminal with wget https://github.com/hpc2n/course-intro-git/archive/refs/heads/main.zip)
        • Unpack with unzip main.zip.
        • You will get a directory called course-intro-git-main.

GitHub and SSH keys