6.375 Lab Machines

Fall 2019

For labs 4 and 5, we only support our dedicated course machines that use your Athena account for authentication and home directory.

Build Servers (Building FPGA images and Running Simulation)

These machines build servers to be used to build your FPGA design and run the simulation. Most of the work prior to running the design on the FPGA should be done using these machines. Each FPGA build takes about 30 minutes so please start early. 'htop' command will show you the current load on the machine ('q' to quit from it). Try to build on the machine with the least load for fast compilation. 

bdbm13.csail.mit.edu
bdbm14.csail.mit.edu
bdbm15.csail.mit.edu

FPGA Servers

Servers with FPGAs attached have been set up for Lab 4. You may log into these servers at: 

bdbm10.csail.mit.edu
bdbm11.csail.mit.edu
bdbm12.csail.mit.edu
Do not build the design or run the simulation on these servers. Once you have finished building your design for the FPGA and all the timing constrains have met, you can connect to these machines to test your design on the FPGA. Please log in to the FPGA machines only if needed and log out immediately once you are done using it. We have implemented a lock so that each student can use the FPGA exclusively for 2 minutes or until the student's command finishes, whichever is shorter. The message "lockfile: Sorry, giving upon /tmplock/fpgalock" indicates that another student is holding a lock. Please retry in 2 minutes. 'w' command in the terminal will show you who's currently logged in the machine (Username cwchung, shuotao are TAs). Let us know on Piazza if any of these machine seems to have crashed. Photo of what these look like.

Connecting to Dedicated Course Machines

We have installed some dedicated Athena servers in CSAIL. Due to the recent policy changes on the CSAIL network, which is separate from the rest of MIT, users who are not on CSAILPrivate WiFi or CSAIL wired network CANNOT ssh into these machines in CSAIL. To accommodate this, the CSAIL network allows accesses from MIT VPN. Please refer to the link to learn how to use MIT VPN. Anyone who is not using the CSAIL network (most of the students are not) must connect to the VPN, and then access these machines EVEN IF you are on campus (e.g., MIT, MIT Secure, Stata Center, many wired connections).
If your connection prints "Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,keyboard-interactive)." and halts after typing in your correct Athena password, you are not included in the whitelist for course machines. We regularly update the list using the registration information from WebSIS but we might make a mistake. Please post your request privately with your Athena account name on Piazza to be added to the list.

If you are a non-MIT student, please obtain an MIT account (aka Kerberos/Athena, associated with @mit.edu) to access MIT VPN and the machines. If you don't have an account, please contact the registrar's office or MIT IST helpdesk at link.

You should test whether X11 forwarding is working by launching a remote program with GUI. For example, launch the calculator from the terminal by typing: 
 xcalc