VSCode remote sessions on Workgroup Server¶

Adapted from Tadej's ATLAS documentation on VisualStudioCode

Tadej's (very helpful) VSCode introduction slides in the ATLAS group meeting

Issue¶

VSCode does not work well with remote network storages, that use tickets/tokens for access. I.e., Like running VSCode on a desktop machine with a remote ssh install on a workgroup server. The ordinary HOME paths are on AFS as file system and the access token has to be renewed on a daily base. Unfortunately, VSCode is unaware of such details and so a remote install will loose its access to the file system and end up in a error state consuming significant CPU.

Solution¶

Configure VSCode to use only explicitly local paths on the remote machine for persistent ssh installations like

{
    "remote.SSH.lockfilesInTmp": true,
    "remote.SSH.serverInstallPath": {
        "naf-GROUPX98.desy.de": "/var/tmp/FOO/vscode/redhat9",
#        "naf-GROUPX99.desy.de": "/nsf/dust/GROUP/user/MYUSER/vscode/shared",
        "lxxplusYYY.cern.ch": "/var/tmp/BAZ/vscode/default,
    }
}

Paths on DUST might also work, since access control is per username - but as DUST is a network file system, performance could degrate.

Also, if you start multiple VSCode instances, the same install path might get used by these (which should work due to the unique identififer of each VSCode instance, but in case you observe odd behaviour, check if there is no clash between these multiple instances)