HPC2N
High Performance Computing Center North
There are many environment variables. Some will be set automatically at login and some which you can change if needed. Many of the environment variables will be related to paths and storage locations, but there are also some which are set for specific applications (like compilers). These environment variables willl be set when you load the 'module' for the application in question. (Read more about modules in the section about them.)
The contents of your home directory are placed on an AFS name space and is backed up regularly. AFS (Andrew File System) is a distributed networked file system, which was developed for security and scalability. Read more about AFS here.
Most differences between AFS and traditional networked file systems (like NFS) are transparant for the user, but some important differences are:
The systems at HPC2N predominantly run various versions of Linux. If you have no experience with that, there are several good online sources that can be used to familiarize yourself with the basic commands.
This FAQ should help HPC2N users answer common questions regarding:
Together with an account at HPC2N you will also get an email address. However, you cannot log in to read it at HPC2N so you will need to set up a .forward file pointing to your home/other email. This file will be used by HPC2N to determine where to send you any information.
The .forward file should only contain the email address you wish your mail sent to. A simple way to create this file is (after logging in to akka or other HPC2N cluster):
When your account is activated, your default shell will be set to bash - the GNU Bourne-Again SHell (bash), which is completely compatible with the Bourne shell (sh). For more details on bash, enter "man bash" while logged in.
In order to enable this, you must login with
ssh -X <username>@<host>
SSH supports tunneling of X11 (X-Windows). This is also very useful if you want to open graphical displays from the remote machine on your local computer. To achieve this, an X11 server must be running on your local machine. The X11 connections are then tunneled and automatically encrypted by your SSH client.
For some types of graphical software this does not work correctly (if they need input from keystrokes). In those cases you must use
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