VS Code remote tunnel on Phoebe¶

With a remote tunnel, VS Code on your laptop edits files and runs code on a Phoebe compute node. The tunnel runs as a Slurm job, so it gets its own CPUs (and GPUs, if you ask for them) instead of sharing the login node.

Prepare your workstation¶

Make sure you have a working GitHub account.
Install VS Code on your workstation or laptop. Installers are available for most Linux distributions, macOS and Windows.
In VS Code, install the Remote Development extension pack.

Download the VS Code CLI (first use only)¶

Log in to Phoebe with SSH, then download and unpack the VS Code command line tool:

curl -L 'https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=cli-alpine-x64' --output vscode_cli.tar.gz
tar -xf vscode_cli.tar.gz

Check that the code binary is there:

$ ls -1
code
vscode_cli.tar.gz
$

Start the tunnel in a Slurm job¶

The tunnel stops when its job ends, so start it inside a screen session. Here the session is named "tunnel":

[jose@login1 ~]$ screen -S tunnel

Inside the screen session, start the tunnel as an interactive job. This example asks for 4 CPUs and 16 GB of RAM for 8 hours on a CPU node, and names the tunnel "Phoebe":

srun --partition=cpu_int --job-name "code_tunnel" --cpus-per-task=4 --mem=16G --time=08:00:00 --pty ./code tunnel --name "Phoebe" --accept-server-license-terms

To use a GPU from VS Code, ask for one on a GPU node instead. Request GPUs only while you use them; see GPU jobs.

srun --partition=gpu_int --job-name "code_tunnel" --gres=gpu:a100:1 --cpus-per-task=8 --mem=64G --time=08:00:00 --pty ./code tunnel --name "Phoebe" --accept-server-license-terms

Detach from the screen session with Ctrl+A, then d (see screen sessions); the tunnel keeps running. Reattach later with screen -r tunnel.

Log in with GitHub¶

The first time, code tunnel asks how to log in. Choose your GitHub account:

[jose@login1 codetunnel]$ srun --partition=cpu_int --job-name "code_tunnel" --cpus-per-task=4 --mem=16G --time=08:00:00 --pty ./code tunnel --name Phoebe --accept-server-license-terms
srun: job 1426008 queued and waiting for resources
srun: job 1426008 has been allocated resources
*
* Visual Studio Code Server
*
* By using the software, you agree to
* the Visual Studio Code Server License Terms (https://aka.ms/vscode-server-license) and
* the Microsoft Privacy Statement (https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/privacystatement).
*
✔ How would you like to log in to Visual Studio Code? · Github Account
To grant access to the server, please log into https://github.com/login/device and use code ABCD-ABCD

Open the URL it shows, typically the device login page https://github.com/login/device, and type in the code.

Connect from your local VS Code¶

Once you have authorized VS Code, connect from your local VS Code to the registered tunnel:

Stop the tunnel¶

The tunnel ends when the job reaches its time limit. To stop it earlier, reattach with screen -r tunnel and press Ctrl+C, or cancel the job with scancel <jobid>.