Noctua
Quick Links:
The Noctua cluster
Details about the hardware architecture of Noctua can be found at the PC² website. The current status and upcoming-events related to the Noctua system can be found at the main page of this wiki.
Noctua is the first phase of the Noctua-project and will be extended 2020/2021 by the second phase.
How to access Noctua
Noctua uses a "jump host" as a load balancer
fe.noctua.pc2.uni-paderborn.de
From fe.noctua.pc2.uni-paderborn.de you can then establish an ssh-connection to one of the two physical frontends of Noctua.
We recommend the following combined command:
ssh -X -t -A fe.noctua.pc2.uni-paderborn.de ssh -X noctua
Alternatively, you can put
Host noctua HostName fe.noctua.pc2.uni-paderborn.de User USERNAME RequestTTY force RemoteCommand ssh noctua
in your ~/.ssh/config and replace USERNAME with your username on Noctua. Then you can use the short command ssh noctua to connect to Noctua.
If you want to connect to the last connected frontend, then use this command:
ssh -X -t -A fe.noctua.pc2.uni-paderborn.de ssh -X noctua-last
Please note, that you can only login to Noctua if you are member of a project that has been granted computing time on the Noctua cluster by the resource allocation board.
If you are not yet member of an accepted project you can:
- ask the project administrator of an accepted project to add you as a user
- or submit a proposal for computing time. Please follow instructions at [1].
First Steps on Noctua
After you have successfully logged in to Noctua we recommend you to:
- Try out pc2status. This commandline tool gives you an overview over the projects you are member of, the used computing times, monthly contingents and file system quotas.
- Get familiar with Slurm which is the workload manager used on Noctua because you need it to do computations on the cluster.
- Have a look at the software already available on Noctua.
If some questions or problems come up, please consult the FAQ or ask us by mail at pc2-support@uni-paderborn.de.
