Using GHPC console

Purpose of console[1,2] servers

Login nodes are intended for basic tasks such as uploading data, managing files, compiling software, editing scripts, and checking on or managing your jobs. Small-scale interactive work may also be acceptable if your resource requirements are minimal. Remember that when you are using a login node, there are generally many other people also using the same login node. Using too many resources on a login node may negatively affect the ability of other people to complete their work. Login nodes on the clusters have memory limits, so please be aware that if you run a process on the login node that goes beyond a certain amount, it may be killed.

The console servers - console1.ghpc.au.dk(External users) and console2.ghpc.au.dk(AU internal users) are intended to be used as a front end to the SLURM compute cluster and to perform basic tasks such as uploading data, managing files, compiling software, and editing scripts that will eventually be run in the cluster. They are NOT high power servers capable of running high load scientific work.

Eventhough the server is configured to limit the potential for user abuse, if you try to run your heavy scripts directly on the console server and slow down the server for other users, all your running processes will be killed abruptly, and your user account will be locked until you can discuss with the sysadmin about the serious inconvenience you just caused to everybody.

If you're in doubt, ask your sysadmin - thami@qgg.au.dk or your senior colleagues.

Alert: Please do not run your production jobs on the console servers. The console servers are limited in resources and shared among all of the users. The compute nodes on the other hand are dedicated to running a specific number of job processes at any given time. They are what your jobs should run on. Any long running jobs or resource-heavy user processes found running on a login node will be terminated.

Operating system

The console servers run CentOS 8 and runs bash as the default shell. The default language is set to en_US (English - United States). If you have special customisation needs, please contact your sysadmin.

Prompt and dot file customisations

Users of Console[1,2] are expected to have their user-level customisations in ".profile". If you're moving to Console1 from the old cluster, you may want to copy your old dot file contents into .profile.

Your sysadmin's .profile looks like below: (as an example for you to customise)

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
        . ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
export PATH
unset USERNAME
export PS1="\u@\h:[\w] > \[$(tput sgr0)\]"
alias ls='ls -alh --color=auto'
alias ..="cd .."
alias cd..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias .....="cd ../../../.."
# Get week number
alias week='date +%V'
# Stopwatch
alias timer='echo "Timer started. Stop with Ctrl-D." && date && time cat && date'

function whereis (){
  find . -name "$1*";
}

# Use standard ISO 8601 timestamp
# %F equivalent to %Y-%m-%d
# %T equivalent to %H:%M:%S (24-hours format)
export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '

# keep history up to date, across sessions, in realtime
#  http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/48113
export HISTCONTROL="erasedups:ignoreboth"	# no duplicate entries
export HISTSIZE=100000                          # big big history (default=500)
export HISTFILESIZE=$HISTSIZE                   # big big history
type shopt &> /dev/null && shopt -s histappend  # append to history, !overwrite