SCIAMA has in total dedicated 8 login servers that you can reach under the URL loginX.sciama.icg.port.ac.uk (with X in {1,…,8}).

They vary slightly in the available hard- and software:

• login1-login4: Intel Westmere CPUs with 12 cores, 24 GB memory per server
• login5-login8: AMD Opteron CPUs with 12 cores , 16 GB memory per server

Depending on the login server, there are now different ways available to access SCIAMA remotely.

All SCIAMA login servers are providing services for access via SSH clients. Linux/Unix/macOS usually have such clients installed as command-line tools. Thus, logging into SCIAMA can be done by the following simple command:

For Windows, it requires the installation of a ssh client from an external source. We recommend the PuTTY software bundle, which provides not only a SSH client, but also additional tools (key generator, key manager, SCP/SFTP client) as well.

Some programs on Sciama come with graphical user interfaces. Thus cannot be run via a pure CLI. Fortunately, SSH allows to forward any graphical interface from Sciama to a remote computer via so-called X-forwarding. This requires that the remote computer runs an X server for the graphical support. (Most) Linux systems come with this pre-installed, but for Windows and macOS. a third-party X server software needs to be obtained (e.g. Xming for Windows and Xquartz for macOS). X-forwarding can then be activated using the ‘-Y‘ argument for the CLI ssh clients i.e.

or enabling it in the PuTTY configuration.

Login1 and Login2 are also running services to access SCIAMA via NoMachine. This provides a full virtual Desktop environment. For details on how to obtain/configure this software, please see HERE.

As an alternative to NoMachine Login3 and Login5 are running X2Go services providing a full virtual desktop environment. Details on downloading and configuring X2Go Client please read the following article: X2Go.