Last update: 9/7/23
Students can use the computers in the student offices and computer lab as well as the smaller copier/printer in Jones 206 (referred to as tukey.uchicago.edu).
aitken is a login node and it is not to be used for computational work.
galton or statistics should not be used for anything, and machines in NON-student rooms should be used only with the permission from the primary user of the machine.
First, ssh into aitken, the head node, and type 'qssh' to request an interactive login with one of the four aitkencompute workstations:
or, you can submit batch jobs to the computes above. There is also an nfs file share, /phddata, which serves as the primary home space for the cluster accounts (this is mounted on aitken, and the computes listed above). Note: On aitken your default home directory is the one specified by your galton account, normally in /ga, while on the computes it is in the much larger /phddata directory.
athos should be used primarily for running programs such as SAS that are not available on the Linux machines. Students should not run more than one computationally intensive process on athos at any given time.
Students are free to run processes on any of the Linux machines except for faculty machines without that faculty member's permission. Try to avoid running more than one process on any single computer. However, students should run 'top' before starting a CPU intensive program on any of the Linux machines to make sure that nobody else is already running a large program on the machine. You may run several jobs on various machines, but use common sense. During busy parts of a quarter this will not be appropriate. You should never prevent others from using a machine (for instance, by locking the screen and leaving the room) in order to run a job. In cases where you do not want to wait around for your program to finish, you should run the program as a 'background' process. Details along with examples of how to do this can be found in the 'Batch Jobs' tutorial.
In the computer room or office spaces, be courteous to others by LOGGING OUT after you have finished or need to break away for any length of time. If you don't, your screensaver will start up (if enabled), and others will not be able to log in until you unlock it or it is freed up by one of the system administrators.
The default quota on /ga is 1GB, and it is backed up nightly.
The Linux-only machines should NEVER be rebooted unless they have definitely crashed. You should always reboot a machine by holding down the Control and Alt keys and hitting Delete. You should only hit the reset button to reboot a machine if the machine has crashed and the above method does not work.
