Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools

Navigation

You are here: Home / Wiki / Kb25

Kb25

Emulab FAQ: Using the Testbed: How do I connect directly to node consoles, without going through

Emulab FAQ: Using the Testbed: How do I connect directly to node consoles, without going through users?

Clicking "Connect to Serial Line" in the Node Options page will send your browser a "text/x-testbed-acl" ".tbacl" file. In windows, if you have installed tiptunnel, available below, you can save this file in a folder and double-click it to launch a tunneled connection to your node. In FreeBSD or Linux, you can save the file and pass it as an argument to tiptunnel, or associate it with tiptunnel in your web browser. Upon connection you typically first have to hit "enter" to elicit output from the target machine.

Instructions for Windows:

  • Run the installer executable, and successfully complete the installation.
  • In the Web Interface Node view, click on the "Connect to serial line" link.
  • Save the resulting .tbacl file in an appropriate place. (for instance a folder off the desktop.)
  • For the lifetime of your experiment, you can simply double-click these .tbacl files to connect.

Instructions for Linux/FreeBSD:

  • Use gunzip, then tar xvf on the downloaded file.
  • Move the resulting tiptunnel binary into a directory of your choice (/usr/local/bin, or ~/bin are two good places.)
  • Set up your browser to handle MIME type "text/x-testbed-acl" as outlined below.
  • In the Web Interface Node view, click on the "Connect to serial line" link.
  • If your browser is properly configured to use tiptunnel, a new xterm window with a telnet session open to your node should emerge.
  • (Alternately, you can tell your browser to save "text/x-testbed-acl" files in a directory and you can run them with tiptunnel directly; this may be more convenient than using the web interface every time you wish to connect to a node in your experiment. Note that these files are valid for the lifetime of your experiment.)

Linux/FreeBSD and Netscape 4.7:

  • Choose preferences from the edit menu.
  • Select Navigator, then Applications under it.
  • Click the New... button.
  • In the MIMEType box, type text/x-testbed-acl
  • In the Suffixes box, type tbacl
  • Choose Application in the Handled by box
  • Next to Application, either type the path to the tiptunnel binary, or use Choose... to find it.
  • Now, be sure to put a space, then %s after the path to the application in the box. This tells netscape to actually pass the aclfile into tiptunnel (Mozilla does not require this; see below.)
  • Click OK, then OK again.
  • Clicking a "connect to serial line" link should now bring up a connection in an xterm window.

Linux/FreeBSD and Mozilla:

  • Choose preferences from the edit menu.
  • Select Navigator, then Helper Applications under it.
  • Click the New Type... button.
  • In the MIMEType box, type text/x-testbed-acl
  • In the File extension box, type tbacl
  • For Application to use, either type the path to the tiptunnel binary, or use Choose... to find it.
  • In Mozilla do not add a %s.
  • Click OK, then OK again.
  • Clicking a "connect to serial line" link should now bring up a connection in an xterm window.