Architecture
Bambi is composed of a login node and 55 compute nodes running RedHat Linux. Each compute node has two dual-core Xeon processors with a total of 4 GB of memory on each node. The login node is used to submit jobs for processing on the compute nodes and for compiling source code.
NOTE: Running computational jobs on the login node is considered to be inappropriate conduct.
Access to the Compute Nodes
The PBS Pro scheduler is used to provide access to the compute nodes. Jobs are submitted with the qsub command and their progress can be monitored with the qstat command. Most jobs will be run in batch mode but interactive access to the compute nodes is available with the qsub -I directive. Example scripts are provided for all of the common applications. The examples can be easily modified for other uses. Contact operations staff or faculty advisors for additional help.
NOTE: Use of ssh to access compute nodes directly is considered to be inappropriate conduct. PBS is unaware of such processes and job performance for other users will be adversely affected.
Disk storage
Users are provided storage space on the /home partition. Files are stored permanently on /home but are not backed up at present. A large scratch space is provided on the /work partition. Files will persist on the /work partition for ten days after creation. PBS creates a temporary space defined by the TMPDIR environment variable on the /work partition. Files allocated in the TMPDIR directory are removed when the job completes.
Module software management
Bambi utilizes the modules environment to manage software versions. All of the necessary path updates, etc., are managed via modulefiles. A list of loaded modules is available via the
module list
command. A list of available modules can be found by typing
module avail
at the command prompt. Help on what interesting-looking modules might do can be obtained from
module whatis xxxx
where xxxx is one of the names from the module avail list. Generally, users' initialization scripts (.tcshrc, etc.) should be largely empty of path definitions. Access to particular software can be obtained through the
module load xxxx
command.