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Getting started!


Creating an Account

  1. Go to https://portal.geni.net/ and click on the orange button that says "Use GENI".
  2. Click the link located on the bottom of the page that says "Request a login here".
  3. Fill out the form that will be shown in that page with all the proper information and submit it.
  4. Keep an eye on your email as the team at GENI will be emailing you when your account is ready for use.

Logging into GENI

  1. Go to https://portal.geni.net and click on the orange button that says "Use GENI"
  2. On this page select "National Center for Supercomputing Applications" for the orginization's name
    GENI
  3. Now write down your account details and log in

Joining a Project

  1. Once logged in, hover on the "Home" button at the top of the page and click on "Projects". Next, click the blue button that says "Join a Project".
    Screenshot Screenshot
  2. On this page write down your Instructor's name. When you find your class's project, click on the "Join" button.
  3. You must now wait until your instructor approves the request to join the project

Installing PuTTY

  1. Open up a new tab on your web browser and go to http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
  2. On this download PuTTY by clicking on "putty.exe"
    Screenshot
  3. Run this file and set PuTTY up on your computer

Getting SSH Keys

  1. On the GENI website on your first internet tab, the top corner of this page should have your name. Hover over your name and then select "SSH Keys".
    Screenshot
  2. Click the blue button that says, "generate and download an SSH keypair"
  3. Follow the directions on the page and enter in a passphrase It is very important to remember this passphrase!
  4. Next, click the blue button that reads "Generate SSH private key"
  5. Lastly, click the button near the top of the window that reads "Download PuTTY key". Remember where you are saving this file

Hello GENI Experiment - Reserving Resources

  1. At the portal home page click the New slice button Screenshot
  2. Name the slice something like [yourLastName]HelloWorld.
  3. Next click the Add Resources button near the top of the page.
  4. In the Choose Rspec section, select the existing Hello GENI option. The follwing topology should appear on the screen. Screenshot
  5. Click on the Site node and choose any aggregate with InstaGeni or ExoGENI. Screenshot
  6. Finally, click the Reserve Resource button at the bottom of the page.

Hello GENI Experiment - SSH to the Server Node/PuTTY Usage Guide

  1. After you send the request to reserve the resources on the previous step, on the top of the pages hover your mouse over "Home" and select "Slices". On this page click on the slice that you created.
  2. If the two boxes look Grey, it means that they are not ready yet. If they are green, it means that they have been reserved successfully and that you may now use them.
    Screenshot
  3. Now, to connect to your nodes you will need both the Host name and the port. To obtain this information for the "Server" for example, click on it; a window should show up on the left with the conection details of everyone is your project.
    Screenshot
    After the "@" sign, and before the colon (":") will be the Host name, the number right after the colon will be the port number. In my case I have "castillo@pcvm1-15.geni.it.cornell.edu:22". The red part is the Host Name, and the blue part is the port number
  4. Now open PuTTY, and write down the details that you just figured out, just like so:
    Screenshot
  5. Now you must tell PuTTY to use the SSH key you downloaded earlier on the "Getting SSH Keys" step. To do this, on the PuTTY Configuration Categories select Connection -> SSH -> Auth. Browse and select your key
    Screenshot
  6. You may now login to the node by clicking the "Open" button. If the following pop-up shows up, just click on the "Yes" button.
    Screenshot
  7. Now on the SSH terminal that is open, you will be prompted to write down your user (Your GENI user) and then your password (The password you used to create your SSH key, NOT your GENI password).
  8. Please note that as you write your password, for security reasons it will NOT be displayed!
  9. If you did everything correctly, your SSH terminal should look like this:
    Screenshot

Hello GENI Experiment - Continued

  1. On your server terminal type in the command ifconfig
  2. Now you should be able to see information corresponding to your server node. Specifically, you should see information about "eth0", "eth1" and "lo"
    Screenshot
  3. To the right of "eth0" you can notice it says "inet addr", the numbers right next to that are the IP address of your node. You may copy and paste this into your browser of preference. Now click on "Web Server Statistics" and see the statistics corresponding to the web server on your node
    Screenshot
  4. Refreshing the page multiple times will yield different statistical information on the page. Refresh the page multiple times and take note of these changes. These changes occur because you are requesting information with each refresh you do.
  5. Next, hit the back button on your web browser and click on the second link this time that reads "Logs from the iperf Server". This shows the statistics from the iperf Server.

Hello GENI Experiment - Generating Traffic Between Nodes

  1. To generate traffic you will have to open a connection to the Client node, you can do so by following the same instructions to connect to the server; the only difference is that you will have to click the Client node on GENI, as opposed to the server, when finding out the Host name and port.
  2. After you connect successfully, your terminal for the client should look similar to this:
  3. Now to start generating the traffic between the Client and Server, execute the following command on the terminal of the Client: iperf -c server -P 2
  4. Try using the same command again changing the 2 for another positive number (Don't make it too big!). You will notice different results on the output

Hello GENI Experiment - Finishing Up

  1. On your server terminal, type "exit" and hit enter to exit out of the server node
  2. Do the same on the client, write down "exit" and press Enter.
  3. Lastly, on the GENI Portal on the page of your slice click the "Delete" button and click "Yes" on the pop-up, this will make the resources you reserved available again for other users

Related Readings and Videos

  1. SSH Private Keys: Link
  2. Network Switch: Link
  3. WinSCP Installation and Usage Guide: Link
  4. Wireshark Installation and Usage Guide: Link

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