Preparation of the environment

Prerequisites

  • You have a Slices account

  • You have a basic understanding of the slices CLI

Step 1 - register to the Post 5G beta program

Post-5G experiments are carried out within the SLICES framework, where resources are structured into projects and experiments. Each experiment is associated with a project. For testing purposes, we created the Post-5G beta SLICES project that you can register to via https://portal.slices-ri.eu/invite/post5g-beta and log in using your Slices account. Enrolling in the beta program is a manual process that may take up to 1 business day (remember that we are based in Europe), so be sure to check your email! You can also create you own project or join any other existing project with the SLICES CLI.

NOTE: The Post-5G beta program is part of an open data community initiative. By joining, all your actions, code, and data within the program will be shared openly with other members.

Step 2 - setup your environment

After you’re enrolled, you can begin setting up your Post-5G experiment. Log in with your Slices account at the Post-5G Blueprint Service and chose the project on which you want to run the experiment, in this case, select post5g-beta that should appear in the project drop down menu. From there, go to the pos Webshell section. This will open a webshell window. The Webshell comes pre-installed with POS and the SLICES CLI, so no software installation is required on your local machine. We will use this webshell in all our experiments, so make sure to carefully configure it.

Note: There is also an expert mode that uses SSH instead of the web interface as explained here.

As you are using the pos Webshell for the first time, hence the Z Shell first-use wizard (ZSh-newuser-install) will prompt you to set up your Z Shell environment. Press 0 to select the default settings, or feel free to customize your environment as you wish.

As you are using the pos Webshell for the first time, you need to register the SLICES CLI by running the following command from the pos Webshell and following the provided instructions. This manual process ensures compliance with local regulations that often require two-factor authentication.

slices auth login

Select your project with the follwiing command (adapt the project name to yours).

slices project use post5g-beta

This initialization process is required only the first time you use the service.

You are now ready to run your experiment!

SSH-Based Shell Access

For advanced use cases such as automation or tunneling, direct SSH access to the infrastructure is available.

Activation Procedure

  1. Register SSH Key Upload your SSH public key using the SLICES CLI.

  2. Validate your account

Visit https://duckburg.net.cit.tum.de/calendar to trigger the synchronization of the user account.

  1. Synchronize Keys Log in once to the Post-5G Webshell and execute:

    sync_ssh_keys

    A successful response resembles:

    {"status":"completed","keys_processed":1}

SSH Connection Details

After successful synchronization, access the infrastructure directly via SSH using:

  • Host: duckburg.net.in.tum.de

  • Port: 10022

  • User: <your_slices_username>

This host also supports SSH tunneling and jump-host configurations and can be used as a bastion for accessing other internal services.