Visual Studio Code remote development on a container instance


Step A - Setup your daily SSH keys

A-1. You must create your daily SSH key to connect to CSCS systems and add them to your SSH agent.

me@laptop:~$ git clone https://github.com/eth-cscs/sshservice-cli.git
...
me@laptop:~$ cd sshservice-cli
me@laptop:~/sshservice-cli$ bash cscs-keygen.sh
Username : myuser
Password: 
Enter OTP (6-digit code): 
...

me@laptop:~/sshservice-cli$ ssh-add -t 1d ~/.ssh/cscs-key
Enter passphrase for /home/me/.ssh/cscs-key: 
Identity added: /home/me/.ssh/cscs-key (www-data@2469cb91e9d0)
Lifetime set to 86400 seconds
Certificate added: /home/me/.ssh/cscs-key-cert.pub (myuser)
Lifetime set to 86400 seconds

me@laptop:~/sshservice-cli$ ssh-add -L
ssh-ed25519 ... www-data@...
ssh-ed25519-cert-v01@openssh.com ... www-data@...


A-2. You must generate also your public key from the private one.

me@laptop:~$ ssh-keygen -y -f ~/.ssh/cscs-key > ~/.ssh/cscs-key.pub
Enter passphrase:

me@laptop:~/sshservice-cli$ ls -a ~/.ssh
.  ..  cscs-key  cscs-key-cert.pub cscs-key.pub


A-3. You must copy your public key on the remote system to be consumed by the container configuration

me@laptop:~$ scp -J myuser@ela.cscs.ch ~/.ssh/cscs-key.pub myuser@clariden.cscs.ch:~/.ssh/

Step B - Setup your remote environment

B-1. Create the data structure for VSCode in advance on the remote system in order to prevent downloading VSCode binaries multiple times.

[clariden][myuser@clariden-ln001 ~]$ mkdir -p ~/.vscode-server
[clariden][myuser@clariden-ln001 ~]$ touch ~/.wget-hsts


B-2. Configure an EDF file for your container environment

[clariden][myuser@clariden-ln001 ~]$ enroot import
Usage: enroot import [options] [--] URI

Import a container image from a specific location.

 Schemes:
   docker://[USER@][REGISTRY#]IMAGE[:TAG]  Import a Docker image from a registry
   dockerd://IMAGE[:TAG]                   Import a Docker image from the Docker daemon
   podman://IMAGE[:TAG]                    Import a Docker image from a local podman repository
...

i.e.

[clariden][myuser@clariden-ln001 ~]$ cat ~/.edf/vscode-pytorch.toml
image = "nvcr.io#nvidia/pytorch:24.01-py3"
writable = true
mounts = ["/iopsstor/scratch/cscs/myuser:/iopsstor/scratch/cscs/myuser",
	  "/users/myuser/.vscode-server:/users/myuser/.vscode-server",
	  "/users/myuser/.wget-hsts:/users/myuser/.wget-hsts",
	  "/users/myuser/.bash_history:/users/myuser/.bash_history"]
workdir = "/iopsstor/scratch/cscs/myuser"

[annotations.com.hooks.ssh]
enabled = "true"
authorize_ssh_key = "/users/myuser/.ssh/cscs-key.pub"


B-3. Start a Container Engine (CE) job for your container instance on the remote system


B-4. (Temporary workaround) Update permissions of authorized_keys file
myuser@nid00XXXX:/iopsstor/scratch/cscs/myuser$ chmod g-w ~/.ssh/authorized_keys


Step C - Configure your SSH client to access the remote container instance
C-1. Configure your local SSH client to access the remote container instance
me@laptop:~$ cat ~/.ssh/config
...
Host clariden.cscs.ch
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  ForwardAgent yes
  User myuser
  ProxyJump myuser@ela.cscs.ch

Host nid00XXXX.clariden.cscs.ch
  Hostname nid00XXXX
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  ForwardAgent yes
  User myuser
  ProxyJump myuser@ela.cscs.ch,myuser@clariden.cscs.ch

Host container.nid00XXXX.clariden.cscs.ch
  Hostname nid00XXXX
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  ForwardAgent yes
  ControlMaster no
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
  User myuser
  Port 15263
  IdentityFile /home/me/.ssh/cscs-key 
  ProxyJump myuser@ela.cscs.ch,myuser@clariden.cscs.ch
...

C-2. Check that you can SSH into the container
me@laptop:~/.ssh$ ssh container.nid00XXXX.clariden.cscs.ch
Warning: Permanently added '[nid00XXXX]:15263' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
myuser@nid00XXXX:~$ python --version
Python 3.10.12
Step D - Setup Visual Studio Code
In principle this workflow should work with pytorch container from nvidia, other container images must anyway provide some basic requirements in order to work via Visual Studio Code remote development.
See Requirements at https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/linux