VS Code Remote Development

VS Code is one of the most popular text editors, and it'd be a shame if you couldn't use it on µLab hosts if it is your editor of choice. Thankfully Microsoft provides an easy-to-use editor extension that allows working remotely over SSH without much configuration. Feel free to reference the official guide, as we'll only cover configuration changes and quirks you may run into while remotely editing on µLab hosts.

Before getting started, we highly recommend you add µLab hosts to your SSH configuration to decrease the complexity of connecting!

Lock Files in /tmp

Since we have a federated login for µLab with home directories stored on a network file system, lock files stored in a user home directory can cause issues when connecting to hosts. To avoid this, change the remote.SSH.lockfilesInTmp setting to true.

Stale Sessions

If you leave your session running for an extended period, your Kerberos ticket may expire, preventing you from editing files. To circumvent this, you'll need to kill your existing session and initiate a new one. You can do this by opening the command pallet and searching for Remote-SSH: Kill VS Code Server on Host... and selecting the appropriate host when prompted.