While using the EUMETSAT side of the European Weather Cloud, refrain from using the Linux User Settings inside Morpheus as a means of user authentication. Instead, use the LDAP (explained below).

As a tenant in the EUMETSAT side of the European Weather Cloud, you'll start off with three pre-configured VMs in Morpheus:

SSH proxy

 The SSH proxy is the barrier between your internal machines and the public internet. With the SSH proxy, you'll have an extra layer of security on top of your VMs. It's equipped with fail2ban, automatic security updates and more. 

To connect to a VM hidden behind the proxy, specify the jump flag -J when connecting via SSH:

ssh -J user@ssh-proxy user@internal-vm

Where ssh-proxy is the public IP of your SSH proxy, and internal-vm is the private IP of the VM you want to connect to.

Remote Desktop

The remote desktop is a regular Ubuntu VM equipped with X2GO; enables you to access a graphical desktop of a computer over a low bandwidth (or high bandwidth) connection. 

This means that you can connect to it via the x2goclient to enjoy a regular desktop experience. To connect, launch x2go and create a new session and specify that you want to connect through your SSH proxy as shown below. Be sure to select "MATE" as your Session Type on the bottom.


FreeIPA  LDAP

The LDAP serves both as a user management system and as your internal DNS nameserver. The best way to get familiar with it is to connect to it.

  1. Start by launching connecting to your Remote Desktop with the username assigned to your ldap tenancy. The admin name and password are located in Morpheus under Tools > Cypher. → ipaadmin_username and ipaadmin_password
  2. Once you're in, launch Firefox and visit the IP of your LDAP server. You'll find the LDAP IP in Morpheus under Provisioning > Instances.
    If you're not automatically logged in, log in with the tenancy specific admin user (under ipaadmin_username in  Tools > Cypher, with the password as before (ipaadmin_password again in Tools > Cypher)
  3. Once you're in the LDAP, you can browse around and check out the features.
  4. Try creating a new user by clicking + Add. You can then click on the user and insert SSH keys, reset its password and more. 


Now that you're familiar with the LDAP, you can conveniently add users to the LDAP by navigating to the LDAP VM within Morpheus and running the workflow Create a new LDAP user which allows you to fill in values without having to log in via the X2GO.