Computational Cluster Programs

Hoffman2 Cluster Operating System

The preferred way to access the Hoffman2 Cluster is through the UCLA Grid Portal at http://grid.ucla.edu. The grid portal makes the Hoffman2 Cluster accessible from any web browser. It provides you with a unified interface to the Hoffman2 Cluster and other clusters at UCLA. If you are going to use the Hoffman2 Cluster from the UCLA Grid Portal, you will not need to know any of the information presented here.

Hoffman2 Cluster Linux Operating System

The Hoffman2 Cluster runs CentOS, a free Enterprise-class Linux distribution.

Linux/Unix Commands and Shells

To use the Hoffman2 Cluster from its head node, you need to know this information about commands, shells and your environment.

Editors

The following editors are available on the Hoffman2 cluster:

VIM -- Vi IMproved

Documentation is available from vim.org. Documentation is also available by entering :help while in the editor.

GNU Emacs

Documentation is available from the Free Software Foundation.

GNU nano -- an editor based on Pico

Documentation is available from the GNU nano homepage.

gedit -- the text editor of the GNOME desktop environment

gedit is a GUI text editor which comes with built-in searchable documentation under its Help menu.

Email

The Hoffman2 Cluster has to be able to handle email because the batch jobs run on the Hoffman2 Cluster normally send email to you to let you know when they start up or complete. Please do not use the Hoffman2 Cluster as the location where you normally send and receive email. Bruin OnLine Provides email services to the campus and many UCLA departments also provide email services to departmental users.

It is important that you keep your email address up to date on the Grid Identity Manager. Batch jobs run on the Hoffman2 Cluster under the SGE (Sun Grid Engine) batch job queuing system send email to you whenever a job starts or finishes. While you can enter your email address in the .cmd file used to start an SGE job, normally these files are created for you by scripts and the output is sent to you on the Hoffman2 Cluster and then forwarded to your email address of record. If you do not keep your email address up to date, these messages will go astray.