Getting started

User access

Go to www.metacenter.no > User Login (Passwords) > 1. Request a user account > HPC

Fill in the form and choose the appropriate project. It is recommended to use your UiO username.

The project manager can give you access to the VASP license through the VASP portal and thereafter informing sigma2@uninett.no to give your user the necessary group affiliations (xvasp and vasp5).

Project	Manager	Group	Resources
NN4604K	Jonathan M. Polfus	Electrochemistry	Saga
NN9136K	Lasse Vines	LENS	Saga
NN9180K	Clas Persson	Structure Physics	Saga

Login

ssh and scp

ssh can be used to login to the cluster with a terminal app on UNIX, macOS or Windows Subsystem for Linux

ssh [username]@saga.sigma2.no

Hostnames and usernames can be saved by creating or editing the config file using for instance the vim text editor

vim ~/.ssh/config

Press i to insert text

Host saga
   HostName = saga.sigma2.no
   user [username]

Press escape to exit insert mode, and then :wq to 'write' and 'quit'.

Login is then simplified

ssh saga

Copy files from cluster to current folder (.)

scp saga:[path]/[filename] .

Copy files to the home directory on the cluster

scp [filename] saga:

PuTTY and WinSCP

PuTTY is an ssh client for Windows that can be downloaded from www.putty.org.

WinSCP is an scp client for Windows that can be downloaded from winscp.net.

Working in UNIX

Basic commands

Learn to use the TAB key to autocomplete commands, paths and filenames.

Learn to view the manual for any command: man [command]

Navigating the filesystem

Command	Description
ls	List files and directories in current directory
mkdir [directoryname]	Make a directory
cd [directoryname]	Change current path to another directory
pwd	Display current path
cd ..	Change path to parent directory
cp [path]/[filename] .	Copy file to current directory
cp [filename] [directoryname]	Copy file to another directory
mv [filename] [path]	Move file to another directory
mv [filename] [newfilename]	Change the name of a file
cp -r [directory] [path]	Copy directory and its contents to new location
rm [filename]	Delete file
rm -r [directoryname]	Delete directory and its contents

Special paths and symbols

Symbol	Description
.	Current directory
..	Parent directory
~	Home directory
/	Root directory
*	Any text pattern
?	Any symbol

Reading text files

Command	Description
less	View text file. View live updates to end of file: Shift-F
head	Display top 10 lines of text file. Specify number of lines: -n [count]
tail	Display bottom 10 lines of text file. Specify number of lines: -n [count]
grep [pattern]	Display each line in text file containing text specific text/symbol pattern.
cat	Concatenate text files sequentially. Write the output to a file: > [filename]

Filesystem on Saga

Home directory: mainly for personal files, scripts etc. due to limited storage space

/cluster/home/[username]

Project folder: Run jobs and store output files in a subfolder called your username

/cluster/projects/[project number]/[username]

Check disk usage and storage quota for home directory and project folder

dusage

Find and remove files matching [filename] in current folder and subfolders

find . -name "[filename]" -exec rm {} \;

Job script

Sigma2 NRIS HPC clusters use Slurm as workload manager and job scheduler. Documentation is available on documentation.sigma2.no/

Computations are run by submitting a job script to the queue

sbatch jobfile

View the queue for a user or project

squeue -u [username] squeue -p [project number]

Job scripts for Saga are available in the project folders

/cluster/projects/nn4604k/jobfile

The job script contains several SBATCH options

#SBATCH --job-name=[jobname]
#SBATCH --account=[project number]
#SBATCH --time=hh:mm:ss
#SBATCH --mem-per-cpu=4600M
#SBATCH --nodes=2
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=40

Saga has 40 CPUs per node and it is recommended to use all CPUs on a node and an 1-2 nodes for optimal performance documentation.sigma2.no/hpc_machines/saga

Copy files to temporary job folder ($SCRATCH)

cp [filenames] $SCRATCH

Copy output files from the job folder to the submit folder when job completes. Savefile will also copy files if the job crashes.

savefile [filenames] 

The working folder can be accessed while a job is running /cluster/work/jobs/[slurm-id]

Aliases and settings

Define shortcuts by adding aliases to ~/.bash_profile

alias l='ls -l'
alias la='ls -l -a'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias nn='cd /cluster/projects/[project number]'
alias q='squeue -u [username]'

You can also add commands such as automatically changing directory to the project folder upon login.

Changes will take effect on next login or manually with source ~/.bash_profile .

vim can be configured in ~/.vimrc . Turn on line numbers to easily jump to a specific line using  :[line number]

set number