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If you have reached this point it is because you are interested in using our testbed lab to develop your own P4 applications and therefore this section is where you are supposed to be.

First of all, you need to request access to the testbed lab through rare@lists.geant.org explaining what are you willing to use the testbed lab for. After committee aproval, you will be granted the access to the testbedlab.

Assuming you already have the permission to use the testbedlab, the following instructions are intended to make you understand how the testbed lab is used, what can you expect from it and what do we expect you to do (and not to do).

Access the

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RARE@NMaaS Domain

In order to provide access to the testbed lab and provide also with some services that are needed to support it, the NMaaS RARE@NMaaS provides among others with VPN access, a reservation service based on schedule (Booked) and a bastion from which the resources are accessible. The picture below is a simplistic representation on your access to the testbedlab.

1. You will basically connect through a VPN network to get access to the NMaaS RARE@NMaaS domain.
2. You will provide with an ssh public key that will be installed on the testbed lab to allow you ssh access.
3. You will connect to the Booked service to make your reservation
4. Your ssh public key will be automatically installed and removed at the precise timeslot on the "Researchers bastion" and the reserved devices.
5. You should now be able to ssh to the "Researchers bastion" and from there jump to the reserved resource.
6. You can happily code, compile and test your p4 code on top of a powerful Tofino device.

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Following subsections explain more in detail  and technically the actions needed from your side to get access to the resources.

VPN Access

So once you are granted administratively access to the testbedlab, a vpn configuration file is provided to you. The vpn is based on openvpn and any Operating service can be used to connect to it. In particular if you are working from a linux system you can use the following command to connect to it and you should get some output similar to the one you can see below

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At this point you shall be able to reach the services provided by the NMaaS RARE@NMaaS , in particular, our booking service at https://p4-bkd-srv.rare.nmaas.eu

Providing your public SSH Key

Access to the bastion and also to the devices capable of building and running p4 programs is available through ssh connectivity employing asymmetric keys.

Generating your keys

In order to get access to the resources you need to provide your public key to rare@lists.geant.org

That key will be installed in our provisioning system to be installed automatically on reservation. If your key has been compromised or you just want to change it, please send us your new public key.

Generating your keys

This section is intended to help if you ever If you ever used ssh keys for ssh access.

You can easily generate a pair via ssh-keygen command, other clients like putty (Windows) also provide ways to generate key pairs (https://www.ssh.com/ssh/putty/windows/puttygen)

$ ssh-keygen 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa): /home/user/.ssh/testbedlab_user_key      
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/testbedlab_user_key
Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/testbedlab_user_key.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:sZQEzn20FTRxyOiKm1x2dHALHncIdhW3+uHsm756koI user@myhost
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 3072]----+
|      ... +=B*+..|
|     o o +=+*o...|
|      o =oo* o . |
|       . ++ o .  |
|       .So . . . |
|      . + .   + .|
|     . = ..   .+ |
|      +  E . o...|
|            ..=*o|
+----[SHA256]-----+

The process will generate two files. One is your private key that identifies you unequivocally and the .pub file that holds the public key allowing anyone (and in particular the testbedlab) to know that it is you and only you accessing it.

So you need to provide us the public key sending it via email to jordirare@lists.ortiz@umgeant.esorg

In case you used putty  there is the option to export your key as openssh format, if possible that's the format desired.

Scheduling system

The testbed lab will enforce user access thanks to the automation of ssh public key installation into the bastion and the switches. The reservations will be checked everyday at 00:00 am so will not be possible to make a reservation for recent current day but it is possible to make a reservation in a reservationfor multiple day days timespan. The reservation system is based on booked and is accessible here: https://p4-bkd-srv.rare.nmaas.eu Your credentials will be provided to you alongside with the openvpn configuration.

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By pressing "Create" your reservation is created and can be changed at any moment later until the day before the reservation starts. Remember that making reservations for the present current day is not possible in the present reservation mechanism.

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Alternatively there is a drag and drop reservation mechanism accessible via Schedule → Bookings . This approach simplifies the search of available devices when no particular device is required but rather simply any device.

Accessing a precise resource

Once the time of your reservation arrives, your cryptographic material will be set in the places where it must be automatically. At that point you will be able to access the device with the following steps

1. Start the VPN access as said above
2. ssh the resource jumping via the p4-tbd-srv.rare.nmaas.eu
   1. There is an option to make a 1 step jump to the resources via command

      $ ssh -i ~/.ssh/gn4_4096_rsa -J netops@p4lab p4@172.16.26.103
      Linux FRA0001 4.14.151-OpenNetworkLinux #1 SMP Tue May 26 16:08:08 UTC 2020 x86_64
      Last login: Wed Jun  3 22:39:51 2020 from 172.16.11.11
      p4@FRA0001:~$

      For this to work you will need to may want to configure your .ssh/config file with the following piece of configuration

      Host p4lab
           Hostname 192.168.113.104
           User netops
           IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gn4_4096_rsa

   2. If you want to do a two step jump, you will need to deploy your rsa key to the p4-tbd-srv and take care to remove it when you finish and before access is removed

Thank you and happy hacking!