Connecting to undergraduate lab machines through SSH has changed in 2025 with the move to UCOMM.

In a terminal / command prompt enter:

ssh your_ccid@ohaton.cs.ualberta.ca

To first connect to an open ualberta CS machine. Replace your_ccid with your actual CCID.

It may ask whether you want to add a connection fingerprint, type yes to this prompt. It will then ask you to enter your password, use the same one you use for all your ualberta account log-ins like bear tracks.

Ohaton is a shared resource, so many users might be taking up CPU resources making testing your programs difficult. You can check the CPU load and current users by entering the command 

top


You will likely want to connect to a specific undergrad machine which will not be as contested. Before connecting to a specific machine, you will either need to be using the university VPN.
https://universityofalberta.freshservice.com/support/solutions/articles/19000109142 links to an external site.
Or connect via ssh to ohaton first.
Afterwards, connect to a specific machine with the command:

ssh your_ccid@ucomm-XXXX-wYY.cs.ualberta.ca

Where XXXX is the room number and YY is the machine number.

The list of available machines can be found here: https://www.ualberta.ca/en/computing-science/resources/technical-support/computing-resources/index.html

If you are using VSCode, you can easily set up an automatic SSH connection that is nearly indistinguishable from accessing it locally.
Install the “Remote - SSH” extension, and set up your ssh config file. 
You will need a proxyjump connection through ohaton in order to connect straight to an undergrad machine.
You’ll also need to generate ssh keys if you haven’t already, use the “ssh-keygen” command (google for details).

Example ~/.ssh/config file:


Host * 

  User *your CCID* 

  IdentityFile *path to your key* 

Host ohaton 

  HostName ohaton.cs.ualberta.ca 

Host ugrad_machine 

  HostName *undergrad machine of your choosing* 

  ProxyJump ohaton

Leave “Host *” as is, don’t change that asterisk.