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Getting started

Setting up an account

In order to create your an account on EDI cluster please reach out to Kamil and / or Staszek via Slack or e-mail.

After the account is approved you will receive credentials via e-mail from the it @ cent.uw.edu.pl address.

The obtained password will allow to login to the entry node (jumphost) at lbs.cent.uw.edu.pl and compute nodes edi0[0-8].

Please familiarize yourself with the general rules of cluster usage before proceeding further - LINK

Warning

Important: in case of lost password or other technical difficulties related to the entry node (not compute nodes) please reach out to the IT department at CeNT UW - address: it @ cent.uw.edu.pl.

Include the [sih-61] prefix in the message title and add cluster administrators @Kamil and @Staszek in CC.

Information

Please note that password changes on each of the compute nodes and the entry node are synced. It is advised to change your initially obtained password after first login.

Connecting via SSH

Connections to the EDI cluster are handled via SSH protocol. See the figure below for a brief introduction of the network organization: Screenshot

In order to login to the entry node you can issue the following command:

ssh your_username@lbs.cent.uw.edu.pl
This will bring you to the entry node (jumphost), afterwards you can connect to any of the compute nodes (click here for a complete list of available resources), for example:
ssh your_username@edi01

In order to simplify file copying, every day work with e.g. Jupyter notebooks the suggested way of connecting to individual edi nodes is to use sshuttle. This allows to bypass the login node and work almost the same way as being connected via VPN to the local network.

Example

Assuming sshuttle was installed according to the guide you can connect as follows:

sshuttle --dns -NHr your_username@lbs.cent.uw.edu.pl 10.10.61.1/24
Once connection is established you can directly login to any edi node:
ssh edi05

Information

Additionally, depending on your computer and network settings, you may have to connect to edi nodes once without sshuttle so that SSH connections are properly configured.

To avoid putting password during each login you can set up authorization via a certificate - additional information is available here

Work environment

Each user has access to two personal directories:

  • /home/users/your_username
  • /home/nfs/your_username

Warning

The contents of the default directory /home/users/your_username are unique to each compute node and they are not available on other nodes.

In order to use distributed file system please /home/nfs/your_username network mount (please follow the guidelines).

Transferring files

The recommended options to send or fetch files from EDI cluster are either scp or rsync.

The storage on the entry host lbs.cent.uw.edu.pl is very limited therefore it is recommended to setup sshuttle to send / fetch files directly.

Information

Assuming you established a connection with sshuttle you can directly send files or directories to any edi node:

scp file.txt your_username@edi05:

Next steps

Once the basics are set up you should be able to start running calculations. Follow the next chapter for more details.