Connecting to Viking off campus

Viking has been configured to only allow connections from the University network. Therefore, in order to access Viking off-campus, you must first connect to either the VPN service, or create an ssh tunnel. These re-route your traffic through the University network allowing you to connect to Viking as if you were on campus.

Using the VPN

Please see the main IT Services page on using the VPN found here.

SSH gateway

The University also provides an SSH gateway service that can be used to allow off-campus access to Viking, as an alternative to the VPN. To use this method, ssh to ssh.york.ac.uk (substituting your username for abc123):

$ ssh abc123@ssh.york.ac.uk

Once you have entered your password and gone through the 2FA (two-factor authentication), you should then see the following message asking which machine you wish to connect to. Simply enter viking and press Enter.

The following options are available:
- Enter the name of the machine you wish to ssh to.
- Enter 'username@machine' to use a different username.

Enter York host or service name: viking

Jump hosting via the SSH gateway

To avoid manual entering the hostname when using the SSH gateway, it’s also possible to directly connect to Viking by “jump hosting”:

ssh -J abc123@ssh.york.ac.uk viking

Hint

You will still need to enter your password, and then complete the 2FA

Note

If you’re using a personal device you should specify your IT Services username before the ‘viking’ address, for example:

ssh -J abc123@ssh.york.ac.uk abc123@viking