vscode_remote_tunnel

VScode remote tunnel helper script

Helper script start_vscode_tunnel.py makes initiating a visual studio code remote tunnel in cheaha easier. It performs the following tasks:

• creates and submits sbatch script to slurm
• waits for slurm job to start running and displays its log file to show github url and access code, which are needed to access the remote tunnel in VScode
• provides reasonable defaults

⚠️ NOTE: This helper script was developed to use with Cheaha at UAB. It likely can be modified to suit other cluster environments.

Requirements

• Python3

Usage

Run the script in slurm cluster.

# to run with defaults
./start_vscode_tunnel.py

# to see help message
./start_vscode_tunnel.py -h

# example custom usage
./start_vscode_tunnel.py --cpu 4 --mem-per-cpu "4G" --partition short 

# request for a particular node(s)
./start_vscode_tunnel.py --nodelist c[0167-0171]

How to get started with VScode remote tunneling in Cheaha

Following are general instructions on how to start using VScode remote tunneling (based on RC docs):

• SSH into cheaha
• Download code cli tool (standalone binary) in cheaha

curl -Lk 'https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=cli-alpine-x64' --output vscode_cli.tar.gz
tar -xf vscode_cli.tar.gz
# move it to bin dir
mv code /home/$USER/bin

• If you haven’t already, add ~/bin/ dir to $PATH. Be sure, code -h executes without any error.
• Run our helper script start_vscode_tunnel.py as described above.
• Output of the helper script will include a line with an 8-character code and a URL. Navigate to the URL on any browser and enter the code.
  • Important! It is recommended not to use the https://vscode.dev/ URL provided. That URL leads to an instance of VSCode running on a third party cloud service (provided by Microsoft) and is not known to be approved for sensitive nor protected data! Instead, please use local VSCode installations only on trusted UAB machines (e.g., your laptop).
• Before connecting to the VSCode Server running on Cheaha ensure a particular setting on your local, trusted machine is removed because it will cause your connection to the VSCode Server on Cheaha to fail!
  • Locate your OS specific settings file (see https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/settings#_settings-file-locations for where you can find it) and open it for editing (note: this file may not exist if you haven't made custom settings for VSCode on your local machine before)
  • in the file look for a line with the setting "terminal.integrated.inheritEnv": false and delete it if you find it see microsoft/vscode-remote-release#1721 (comment) for info on why this issue occurs and how it was figured out and resolved to make tunnel connections work
  • save the settings.json file, make sure to close VSCode if it's running on your local machine just to ensure the updated settings are used when you open VSCode again
• Open VSCode on your local, trusted machine, click the >< button in the lower-left of the main VSCode window to open the command palette. Select “Connect to Tunnel...” to find your tunnel. The names of tunnels started on Cheaha should be the same as the compute node hostname followed by _cheaha_tunnel, e.g., c0150_cheaha_tunnel. You may be prompted to authenticate to GitHub during the setup.