How to connect via point-and-click Graphical User Interface (GUI)
If you want a full point and click interface to control programs with your mouse, you can use a VNC client. One supported by native AWS and recommended is DVC, instructions here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/setting-up-installing-linux.html
How to copy data to and from RDS
You can use the usual methods to copy to and from your RDS drive as you would from any off-network location, i.e. see for details Research Data Store
Or you can mount your RDS drive on your image using a tool like sshfs with these commands:
sudo apt install sshfs
mkdir /home/ubuntu/myRDS
sshfs <unikey>@research-data-ext.sydney.edu.au:/rds/PRJ-<yourproject> /home/ubuntu/myRDS
Done! Now you can copy back and forth between RDS and your RONIN machine seamlessly.
If you need to un-mount your drive, use:
sudo umount /home/ubuntu/myRDS
Note: there is a cost (~$0.15/GB) for copying data TO your RDS drive (data egress). Copying data from your RDS is free (data ingress).
Can I use an S3 bucket for storage.
Yes! If you want to keep your data in the AWS cloud, you can add and use S3 storage as required, for details see:
https://blog.ronin.cloud/object-storage/
Adding additional users to Auto Scale Clusters
Sometimes you may want to add a new user to the machine that is not part of the project, but may need to connect to the box. Generally this is not recommended. Nevertheless you can run a script like this:
#!/bin/bash
SRC=$1
DEST=$2
SRC_GROUPS=$(id -Gn ${SRC} | sed "s/ /,/g" | sed -r 's/\<'sudo'\>\b,?//g' | sed -r 's/\<'${SRC}'\>\b,?//g')
SRC_SHELL=$(awk -F : -v name=${SRC} '(name == $1) { print $7 }' /etc/passwd)
sudo useradd --groups ${SRC_GROUPS} --shell ${SRC_SHELL} --create-home ${DEST}
sudo passwd ${DEST}
And create a new user with “clone_user.sh ubuntu newusername”
You then will need to call sbatch (and similar) from its path, e.g. /opt/slurm/bin/sbatch
Again, not recommended for Ronin, but you may find a use case where you need to do this. Note, there is additional configuration required to allow this user to login via ssh.