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News For SkyNet Users

25.01.2001

PBS installation: NQS was stoped on all machines. It was replaced by PBS. Four queues were created for jobs execution: xxl for jobs longer than 5 days long with 120 hours (5 days) CPU time limit, medium with 24 hours limit and small with 4 hours limit. Jobs exceeding the time limit of its queue will be stoped and removed automatically. The jobs will be submitted to the queue depending on requested time (qsub flag: "-l cput=hh:mm:ss").

The information on job execution tranfered to the machine there the job was submitted via ssh channel. So you should configure the ssh for login without password for cluster machines:

$ ssh-keygen
........
$ cat ~/.ssh/identity.pub >> authorized_keys

Job can be submited to the queue by the command:

qsub [-key val] batch.sh

Job parameters can be spcified in the job script header, for example:

#QSUB -l cput=20:00:00

See man qsub for more details.

You can gat an info about queues by qstat command, for example: qstat -a show the information about all queues on all machines in the domain/cluster. See also man qstat

You can stop/remove your job with the qdel command. For removing job on the remote clusters you should specify the name of master machime, for example:

qdel 123.rrcsrv

See man qdel for more details.

Export of the local /scratch directories was not changed, the scheme remains the same: hydra-0:/scratch -> /scr/hydra-0 with an exception for triton: triton:/scratch will be found in /scr/triton_

You can find an example of job file here: /home/triton/skynet/pbs.csh.

29.12.2000

ORCA-4.40 was installed by Olga Kodolova. Use the objectivity.sh or objectivity.csh (it depends on your shell) to tune the parameters for Objectivity/DB. You can find these scripta in /home/triton/skynet Look to the /home/triton/skynet/orca42.txt for instructions how to work with Objectivity/DB.

30.10.2000

StarOffice-5.2 was installed on triton in configuration that allowed multiuser work. You should run /home/cms/local/soffice52/program/setup for your personal configuration. Check "Standard installation of the workstation" during the configuration (it should be default option). When the dialog "Install Java" appears, check "manual search" and set the path: /opt/jdk. Then you can run the program from you home directory.

26.05.2000

NQS reorganistion: Three queues were created for jobs execution: long with 120 hours (5 days) CPU time limit, medium with 24 hours limit and small with 4 hours limit. Jobs exceeding the time limit of its queue will be stoped and removed automatically.

Job can be submited to the queue by the command:

qsub -q queue batch.sh

where queue is the name of the appropriate queue (long/medium/short). Queue name can be spcified in the job script header, for example:

#QSUB -q medium

See man qsub for more details. Note: mail sending does not work at this moment.

You can gat an info about queues by qstat command, for example: qstat -a -d show the information about all queues on all machines in the domain/cluster. See also man qstat

You can stop/remove your job with the qdel command. For removing job on the remote machines you should specify thei names, for example:

qdel -k 123@hydra_2

Use -k flag, if you need to stop the job which already running. See man qdel for more details.

Export of the local /scratch directories was not changed, the scheme remains the same: hydra_0:/scratch -> /scr/hydra_0 with an exception for triton: triton:/scratch will be found in /scr/triton_

12.04.2000

Printing changes: Printer filters were replaced for all printers. All old options remains, but in addition you have the following possibilities:

1. Printing directly in PS (as before upgrade), PDF, troff, TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PPM/PBM/PNM/PGM, fax (g3), DVI (without external iclusions), fig (xfig format);
2. Any printable file can be printed even if it was been compressed by bzip2, gzip, compress commands;
3. Plain text documents are printed automaticaly by means of a2ps command using koi8-r fonts.

Additon options for lpr command can be set via "-C" flag:

-CD, -Cdouble - Printing two pages on one in landscape mode.
-CP, -Cplain - Printing the texts without borders and standard headers/footers in portrait mode

These flags can be combined, for example: -CDP - this combination will print plain text file in two columns without system headers in landscape mode.

16.04.2000

Keyboard russification changes!!! kikbd will not be started automaticaly. If you need to write something in Russion, start this utility manualy or specify this in your autostart. You can use any other program to russify the keyboard (xrus or kikbd for example).

22.11.99

The farm is ready to be completly noninteractive. NQS is installed as a batch queueing system. Use qsub, qdel, qstat commands to control the queue. One queue only is in the use now. You can find ah example of batch job in /home/triton/skynet/nqs.sh. The flags in the header are described in man qsub. SCRATCH disks of farm can be automatically mounted in /scr directory on all machines using the following map: hydra_0:/scratch -> /scr/hydra_0 (for triton triton:/scratch will be found in /scr/triton_)

20.08.99

The batch farm was built in our laboratory. It has four nodes of 400 MHz PII with 128MB RAM and about 7GB of accessible disk space. The names of the nodes are hydra_0, hydra_1, hydra_2, hydra_3.

02.08.99

The versions of CMSIM 116 and 117 were installed in SkyNet. The environment should be the same as in CMS. Use cmsim command to set the versions. The examples can be found in $CMS_PATH/cmsim/cmsxxx/examples. The default vesion is CMS117

14.05.99

The beta version of Objectivity/DB was replaced with the release v5.1. All settings remain the same.

10.04.99

Geant-4.0.0 was installed into /home/cms/geant4.0.0. The version was compiled with the support of Mesa-3.0 for visualisation and Motif and Athene as UI. Initialization script G4env.csh can be used for setting the common environment variables by means of the command "source G4env.csh".

23.08.98

CMSIM is installed now!

Some buges are still needed to be fixed but as a whole it works. The development environment is almost the same as in CMS.

The versions of emacs and xemacs were updated, the editor fte was installed and wpe was updated as well.

09.07.98

STRONG ACCESS RESTRICTIONS !!!

Due to continuous Internet attacks against our machines (and other machines in ITEP as well) I applied the following limitations:

• All actions are logged!
• Using remote access utilities (rlogin, rsh, rexec) is allowed now for the cluster SkyNet machines only!
• Telnet is allowed for the following domains: .ITEP.RU, .DESY.DE, .CERN.CH, .CEBAF.GOV, .FNAL.GOV. This list is not full and any your suggestions can be accepted (kolosov@iris1.itep.ru).
• Finger service has the same limitation as telnet.
• FTP service closed at any host except triton.itep.ru, ares.itep.ru night01.itep.ru, pchffrfcms.itep.ru
• Use SSH for access to cluster from everywhere except France and USA (access can be legal if you will use unencripted connection)
• Access to NFS diskspace limited to machines of cluster and few others. All other rpc services were closed completely.

21.05.98

Translation to glibc2 is in progress. Troubles are possible.

CERNLIB v 98 was installed as CERN_LEVEL=new into the directory new of standard CERN tree.
WARNING!!! This distribution includes new version of PYTHIA - it is incompatible with ALL your old programs!

Templates for ITEP documents now available. In TeX you can use itep ΙΜΙ eafo secondary styles and a command \header to activate the settings.
In Applixware (applix) you should simply select ITEP or EAFO templates then creating new document (File->New menu item)

15.03.98

XFree86 was upgraded to version of 3.2.2.

07.02.98

KDE Beta3 was installed.

29.11.97

KDE Beta2 was installed. Now it is an official system of SkyNet.

17.11.97

"f00f" bug in Pentium was avoided by upgrade to version 2.0.32. It was help to avoid "b00m" a week later.

25.10.97

Due to the problems with CERN firewall the transition from rdist to rsync was made. It was made in conjunction with installing of ssh.

20.10.97

The tests with kde was successful so kdm was installed on all machines (with monitor of course).

10.01.97

Upgrade to kernel v 2.0.28

20.09.97

rdist was configured to be used for filesystem synchronization for SkyNet machines in ITEP. It was supposed that such synchronization will be regular operation.

17.09.97

KDE-alpha was installed for tests.

16.09.97

Licensed version of Applixware-4.3 was purchased for SkyNet, many documents can be prepared without Windows

23.07.97

Upgrade to XF86-3.3

08.07.97

Now we have machines of SkyNet in CERN!

07.07.97

MC-4.0 is installed now in SkyNet. This is a Norton commander like file-manager for UNIX with support ftp and various types of compressed (tar, rpm, debian, rar etc) virtual filesistems. The support for undelete (!!!) was added to MC as well. You can use the text-based (mc) or TK-based (tkmc) versions of Midnight Commander.

07.06.97

τΕθ's font encoding was changed from "alternative" to koi8-r. Old documents can be transcoded by means of command: trans -t alt2koi < infile > outfile or in emacs's Russian environment.

08.04.97

Text files in Russian (koi8-r) can be printed by means of a2ps.

01.04.97

Installation of GIMP (0.99.6), various nice pictures can be manipulated easily.

01.04.97

CERNLIB (97a), was installed at SkyNet along standard structure of CERN software. cernlib utility was tuned to be correct in local environment

10.10.96

XF86-3.2 was installed

03.09.96

Upgrade to XF86-2.1.2G. Nothing special but tuning was made from more 3000 km via very bad link with restriction for protocol X11. One more difference between UNIX and "most reliable operating system"

09.08.96

Upgrade to kernel v 2.0.8

17.07.96

After four attempts MARS-NWE was installed and configured.

12.06.96

Upgrade of the kernel to prerelease of 2.0.0. gcc-2.7.2 and last version of g77 were installed.

20.05.96

NIS server was successfully installed after long tuning - SkyNet.

03.04.96

HTTP-server was installed on triton.itep.ru

02.02.96

The transition to ELF-format was made.

19.01.96

System was installed on machine which then will have the name of triton. The number of computers in cluster is doubled

15.09.95

Linux was installed on the first machine of SkyNet. Though it was due to permanent crushes of "most reliable operating system" it gave a start to building IHMO the best cluster in ITEP.

Created by V.Kolosov 27.06.96, Last update 14.02.2001