# Remote Services

Remote Services are a set of Eclipse plugins that provides a framework for accessing remote systems using a variety of protocols. Currently supported protocols include SSH, Telnet, and Serial connections. PTP makes use of Remote Services in order to provide remote functionality such as Synchronized Projects and remote launching and monitoring. The following sections will provide some information on creating and using connections to remote systems.

Topics:

- Creating Remote Connections
  - Connection to a remote machine
  - SSH tunneling
- Editing Remote Connections - Connections Preferences
- Removing Remote Connections
- Remote Terminal access via a Remote Connection

## Creating Remote Connections

New connections are typically created when a need for them arises, such as creating a remote or synchronized project, or a run configuration on a remote target machine. Once a remote connection is created, it can be reused any time remote access to the target machine is required.

There are generally two ways to create a new connection to a remote machine. Dialogs that allow connections to a remote system, such as when creating a synchronized project using the New Synchronized Project wizard, generally provide a New... button that opens the New Connection dialog. The second way is to use the Add button on the the Remote Development > Remote Connections preference page. This is described in the Preferences section below.

The following image shows the New Synchronized Project wizard, which allows the user to choose a directory on a remote system that will be synchronized. As can be seen, this part of the dialog contains a New... button which will open the New Connection dialog as shown.

Select New... and use the New Connection dialog to specify a Connection name of your choice and the address of the target system in the Host field. The fill in the User, and Password or Public key fields as appropriate. Select Finish to create the connection.

## SSH Proxy

Sometimes it is necessary to connect via an intermediate host in order to reach a target system. This is typical in many high performance computing installations. Tunneling via a proxy can be done either through the user interface, or by configuring a tunnel on the command line, and then using the tunnel for a remote connection. The command line interface to ssh is outside the scope of this document, but see the PTP Wiki FAQ on tunneling for how to set up the tunnel.

To configure an intermediate proxy using the New Connection dialog, enter the Connection name, Host, User, and authentication information for the target system as previously. Next, open the Advanced section of the dialog as shown below.

In the SSH Proxy Settings section, select the Remote radio button, then either select an existing connection or create a new connection to the intermediate host. Once this has been done, the proxy will be configured and this connection will be used whenever a connection is required to the target host. Note that when the connection is opened, you may be asked for two sets of credentials (the intermediate and target hosts), depending on your connection settings.

When using a manually configured ssh tunnel, the Host will normally be configured to be localhost. The Advanced section will be used to change the Port setting. Choose a port number that corresponds to the port specified for the manually configured the ssh tunnel. The other entries in the Advanced section should be remain the default values.

## Editing Remote Connections

To edit remote connection information after a connection is created, e.g. to change userid, password, etc., open the Eclipse Preferences dialog, thenb select the Remote Development > Remote Connections page.

To edit a connection, it must first be closed if it is open(running). To close a connection, select it and use the Close button.

Once stopped, edit the connection via the Edit button.

Then make any changes to the connection and select Finish

The connection need not be manually restarted (re-opened). It will automatically open the next time that communication with the target machine is needed.

## Removing Remote Connections

To remove a connection, select it in the Connections page of the Preferences page as described above, and select Remove.

## Shell access to Remote systems

For convenient shell access to a remote system within an Eclipse view, see Remote Terminal.

## Default Remote Services Provider

By default, Remote Services is configured to use SSH as the default provider. This will avoid the user having to specify which Remote Service Provider to use when creating a connection. The Preferences > Remote Development preference page can be used to override the default selection if desired. Setting the default provider to None will force the selection of a provider whenever a new connection is created.

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