ARSC HPC Users' Newsletter 279, October 10, 2003

Contents

• Status of IBM p655 Cluster and Cray X1
• Position Open: ARSC Chief Scientist
• ARSC Training Reminder
• Quick Tip

Status of IBM p655 Cluster and Cray X1

IBM p655+ Cluster: "iceberg":

Shipment and physical installation of iceberg is complete. This includes over 6 kilometers of cabling connecting 14 separate cabinets.

From the user point of view, the system contains a total of 100 SMP nodes (servers):

92 - 8-CPU p655+ nodes,
4 - 8-CPU p655 I/O nodes,
2 - 8-CPU p655 interactive nodes,
2 - 32-CPU large-memory p690+ nodes.

Cray X1, "klondike":

Last week we activated several "pioneer" user accounts on klondike. The system is not quite ready for general usage. Pioneer users accept, among other things, that system and user software and various configurations are still being updated without our normal advance notice. We were not able to honor all requests for pioneer accounts.

Klondike should be available for general usage (by allocated, registered ARSC users, of course) in mid-November.

Position Open: ARSC Chief Scientist

You might check out our new job vacancy announcement:

http://www.uaf.edu/uafhr/Employment/Job0903-379.html

Here are excerpts from the announcement:

"The Arctic Region Supercomputing Center invites applications and nominations for a dynamic scientist and leader to serve as ARSC's Chief Scientist."

[...]

"He or she will be expected to lead his or her own research group that will serve as a model for signature science that incorporates high performance computing, communication, mass storage systems and visualization. Applicants who will promote the use of the Data TeraGrid are particularly encouraged. The chief scientist's research group will serve to catalyze computational science activities at the center, working to connect efforts at the center, campus and the remote user community."

ARSC Training Reminder

http://www.arsc.edu/support/training.html

Next up:

Title: Unix Scripts and Batch
Date: Weds., October 15th, 2pm
Location: Gruening 211
Instructor: Shawn Houston, ARSC

Title: Introduction to Scientific Visualization
Date: Weds., October 22nd, 2pm
Location: Butrovich 109
Instructor: Roger Edberg, ARSC

training@arsc.edu

A:[[ I logged onto your system and tried to compile my cpp program, as 
  [[ follows:
  [[   cpp prog.cpp
  [[ Why didn't it work?  

  #
  ### Thanks to Kate Hedstrom
  #

  Is this the C preprocessor or C++? Unix cpp is the C preprocessor and
  I use it on Fortran:

    cpp -P file.F > file.f

  The C++ compiler is called CC, xlC, or g++, depending on the system.


  #
  ### And thanks to Greg Newby
  #

  "It didn't work" covers a lot of ground.  Most likely, however, you
  really didn't mean to call the C pre-processor (cpp), but the C or C++
  compiler (CC, cc, c++, g++, etc.).  Normally, the compiler will call
  the pre-processor for you.

  If you get an error such as "command not found," it could be that your
  search path doesn't include the compiler's location.  If you're using
  a system you configured yourself, you might have neglected to install
  the necessary development environment (some Linux distributions leave
  out compilers in their most basic installations).

  If, on the other hand, you typed "cpp prog.cpp" and got your prompt
  back, it's likely it DID work.  With Unix, the output from a
  successful command is another shell prompt.

  Finally, if you're getting lots of error messages this might indicate
  invalid syntax or other problems with your program.  In addition to
  using the compiler directly, rather than the pre-processor, you
  probably need to spend some time looking at your code for errors.  If
  you think something else might be amiss, try a simple "hello, world"
  program to make sure you can compile and run it successfully.



Q: Special characters for egrep include "$" (match end of line) and
   "^" (match beginning of line).  I had a file containing dollar
   signs ("$") at the beginning of many lines, and of course, these were
   the lines I wanted to extract with egrep.

   By trial and error, I discovered I had to DOUBLE escape the dollar
   signs.  My curiousity aroused and my day already shot, I then
   discovered that to extract lines beginning with carats ("^"), I would
   only have to escape the carat once.  Like this:

     mywkstn> cat test.txt
     wwwww
     $ xxx
     yyy $ 
     ^ zzz
     000 ^
     11111
     mywkstn> egrep "^\\$" test.txt
     $ xxx
     mywkstn> egrep "^\^" test.txt
     ^ zzz
     mywkstn> 

  Am I cursed?  Or is this rational behavior which someone can explain? 

[[ Answers, Questions, and Tips Graciously Accepted ]]

Thomas J. Baring	ARSC Web Specialist	ph: 907-450-8619
Donald Bahls	ARSC User Consultant	ph: 907-450-8674
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
University of Alaska Fairbanks
PO Box 756020
Fairbanks AK 99775-6020

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