From: hanson@math.uic.edu Date: 29 Jan 2003 14:46:56 -0600 To: hanson@math.uic.edu Subject: Re: Argo Beowulf Cluster Accounts Request for MCS 572 Hello Class, Attached below is the information for your UIC ACCC argo Beowulf cluster account. Please change your passwd as soon as you get a chance. There will be more details when we cover this cluster in class in preparation for a project. I probably will not be the first one covered. Super Cluster Computing, ProfHanson =========read this from Michael Homa @ ACCC UIC=============================== Each student has an account. The login id is the students netid. I did not send out email so you'll have to distribute the passwords in class. After logging in, each student should change the password using the passwd command. Various things in no particular order: o Documentation is permanently under construction. To see what we have so far: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/hardware/argo o Each person has a directory in /scratch. We currently are not enforcing quotas in either scratch or home directories. Each person was placed in one of five filesystems for home space. Each of those filesystems has approximately 120GB of space. I'm hoping that your students are planning on writing 20GB output files. o Where possible, please use the batch system for job execution. I know there was some issue regarding using batch on borg. The reason I'd like batch to be used here is because of accounting issues. Every four hours, the contents of the batch accounting records are compiled and summarized in a web page. (I think your students, and you, will find the page useful. To see it: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/hardware/argo/argo_current_acct.html). By having statistics to support my contention that the system is fully used, I can make a case for more nodes. If your students circumvent PBS, then I'll have no evidence; your students could be running job after job and I won't know it. Remember that line in the movie "Field of Dreams:" if you build it, they will come. Well, I've build one grandstand. I need that grandstand to be SRO for me to get the money for another grandstand. o Don't run jobs on the master node. It'll make the system appear sluggish. All jobs should be submitted to compute nodes (there are 16 of them) for execution. We have a monitoring system that sends me notes when jobs are run on the master. I don't want to send out the "angry system admin email notes." o There are series of web pages that show system load info. I've yet to link those pages into the argo home. To see the load: http://daedalus.cc.uic.edu/htbin/cricket?target=%2Fend_user_servers%2Fargo o For MPI, use the scasub command to submit to batch. It's been tuned for the Scali software. o We have a 2 by 16 license for the Portland Group compilers: two concurent compiles across the sixteen nodes. If more than two students try to compile at the same moment, others will have to wait. To upgrade to a 5 by 64, the next level on the scale, will cost between $4K and 5K. o I'm working on the daily and weekly backup scripts; they should be done by the end of the week. If any of your students are "eager beavers" have them ftp their work to icarus for backup purposes. That should do it. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions to make the system useful are, of course, welcome and appreciated. I appreciate your using the system. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Floyd B. Hanson, PhD Professor of Mathematics (Applied Math and Computational Science) UIC Excellence in Teaching Award, 2001-2002 AY UIC CETL Teacher Recognition Award, 1998-1999 AY SIAM Member (SIGs in Control and Supercomputing) IEEE Senior Member, Control Systems and Computer Societies Associate Director, Laboratory for Advanced Computing Associate Director, Laboratory for Control and Information Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science (MC249) University of Illinois at Chicago 851 South Morgan Street Chicago, IL 60607-7045 Office Phone: 1312-413-2142 (Email preferred) Office Fax: 1312-996-1491 Email: hanson@uic.edu URL: http://www.math.uic.edu/~hanson/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------