This is the June, 2001 newsletter of the ITC Research Computing Support Group. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the information presented here please contact the ITC Research Computing Support Group via e-mail to res-consult@virginia.edu, or at the Research Computing Support Center, 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800. The Research Computing Support Center is open 9AM-5PM, Monday through Friday.
Home2 will be down for an hour, from 9 - 10 p.m., to replace some of its disk hardware in preparation for an upgrade planned for later this summer. Normally, the two servers operate as a cluster, with either capable of taking over the service of the other. In order to accomplish this maintenance, we have to break the server cluster so that home1 can operate independently while home2 is down, without taking over home2's service, then reestablish the cluster once all the replacement disk hardware is installed on home2. This will require two brief shutdowns of home1, at the start (9 p.m.) and at the end (around 10 p.m.) of the maintenance period. Each of these will only last two to three minutes.
During each of the reboots of home1, all processes running on the ITC Unix clusters, including blue.unix, unix.mail, SP2, and Unix workstation lab, will be delayed. Response to logged in users will be extremely slow and logins to any of these systems will be delayed until home1 is back up. HDS logins from PCs will be refused while home1 is rebooting. This process will take no more than three minutes for each reboot, so the impact will be minimized. Active connections should be recovered once home1 has completed each reboot.
All home2 directories under both /courses and /h2 will be unavailable for the duration of the maintenance period. People whose directories are in /h2 include those who are using leased disk wedges and those who require NFS access to their directories from more systems than the ones which make up the ITC clusters. Processes using any of these directories at the time home2 is shut down (e.g., jobs on the SP2) will likely report NFS errors, and the errors may result in the processes failing. Systems which have /courses or /h2 mounted will report NFS server response problems during this period, but the mounts should recover after home2 comes back online.
ITC has just such storage space, called the Hierarchical Storage Manager (HSM). The HSM facility is a large tape robot that can be used to store large amounts of data, the current quota is 5 GB of space for faculty and staff with up to 20 GB or more on request. The system is configured to appear like a normal file system that is on disk, the only difference is that the HSM may occasionally be slower at returning large files that have not been used for a long period of time. For more details on the HSM see the HSM webpage: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/hsm.html
The HSM can be accessed from both your blue.unix or other unix workstation and from your PC running Windows95/98/NT/2000.
To request space on the HSM e-mail res-consult@virginia.edu with the following information: your UVa computing ID, your e-mail address, your UVa affiliation (faculty, staff, graduate student, etc) and the name of the Unix system from which you wish to use your HSM directory.
If you're running short of space on your blue.unix account or your Home Directory account, the HSM may be just the data storage space you need, e-mail us today.
The Home Directory Service (HDS) allows you to access your files from multiple locations from your PC or Macintosh computer. Files on the HDS are backed up daily by ITC as well as a "snapshot" backup done approximately every 2 hours. You can even publish your webpage to the world from your HDS. Your Home Directory file space appears as just another folder or disk drive on your PC or Macintosh. You access files on it, just as you would any other file on your computer. Faculty start with a 75MB space quota, which can be increased with a simple request.
To create your own Home Directory Service directory, look at the information on the web at: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/homedir
Ever dropped in on a colleague and wanted to show them some data or a paper you've been working on, but didn't have it with you? Now you don't have to, just pull it up from the Home Directory Service on her computer.
What are you waiting for-go create your Home Directory Service directory today!
During this period the Sun and SGI workstations in 102 Small Hall will be unavailable, however there are 10 Sun workstations available in E225 Thornton Hall lab as well as 2 SGI O2's. Also available for remote access are three SGI O200s with dual processors and 6 Sun Netras each with 1GB of memory. These machines can be accessed through the following page: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~userv/usage.html
When the Small Hall lab re-opens the Unixlab cluster will consist of the following machines:
If you have concerns or questions about the renovations, please contact Tim Tolson, Research Computing Support Manager, at 243-6592 or e-mail to TTolson@Virginia.EDU
Grace is installed on IBM RS/6000, Sun Solaris and Silicon Graphics machines at UVa in /contrib/bin, it can be invoked with the command xmgrace. If you are remotely connected to a Unix machine it will be necessary to set the DISPLAY environmental variable.
Grace is derived from Xmgr (a.k.a. ACE/gr), originally written by Paul Turner.
The Grace homepage is http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
Further information on Grace can be found here: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/xmgrace_docs/
The next meeting of VASUG will include a picnic and is tentatively set to be held at the Defense Supply Center in Richmond on September 12.
If you are interested in networking with the SAS community in Virginia and in keeping current on the latest SAS developments in a fun and relaxed atmosphere, see the VASUG site for details and contact information.
To learn more about SAS at UVA, visit the SAS Support page at http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/sashelp.html
With the retirement of Wally Reed last May, ITC has started distributing the ESRI (ArcGIS) software at the RCSC in 244 Wilson Hall. The software will be distributed via CD-ROM for free, just as the other ITC site licensed software (e.g., SPSS, MatLab, etc.) are.
ITC will handle the contract and licensing of the software and any administrative matters with ESRI. Questions or concerns about ESRI administrative matters, software distribution, etc, should be e-mailed to UVa-ESRI@Virginia.EDU.
Technical support and assistance will be mostly handled by Geospatial and Statistical Data Center, Alderman Library (Michael Furlough, Director). The most efficient way to handle most trouble calls is to e-mail ESRI-Consult@Virginia.EDU with as much detail on the problem as possible including all the steps you use and error messages received or other aids in debugging. If the question cannot be solved locally, they can then send your information to ESRI and have them contact you directly. The goal is to get as much documentation as possible of the problem.
David Phillips, Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture (dlp@virginia.edu) and Brian Smith, Civil Engineering (bls2z@virginia.edu) will be the faculty working most closely with ITC on the license transfer and other issues.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ESRI Software -- We are currently distributing the full ESRI ArcInfo version 8.1 software suite, available for UVa networked machines only, along with MapObjects 2.1 for Windows and SDE products as needed.
Shipping has been delayed for the stand-alone version of ArcView, and we anticipate having ArcView ready for distribution within 1 to 2 weeks.
Because of the number of CDs and complexity of the product line, we ask that you contact us before coming to pickup any ESRI software. You can call us at 243-8800 or e-mail at res-consult@virginia.edu
GIS COURSES -- This summer during the 2 four and one half week Summer Session, Brian Rizzo will present the basic EVSC 362 GIS Methods course introducing ESRI software aimed at graduate students and advanced undergraduates interested in continuing GIS research applications in the Fall. During the Fall, both David Phillips and Brian Smith will present GIS oriented courses in planning and civil engineering. Environmental Sciences expects to hire a lecturer to present GIS and Remote Sensing courses. Be sure to check the new and continuing offerings come late August.
From the VMware web site:
"VMware is software that delivers a flexible and safe computing environment
through VMware MultipleWorlds technology. This thin software layer sits between
your Intel hardware and your operating system, virtualizing the hardware and
managing all hardware resources. MultipleWorlds technology takes the principles
of classic virtual machine technology - and combines them with advanced virtual
networking and system and resource management technologies.
VMware MultipleWorlds technology allows completely independent installations of operating systems on a single machine. Multiple instances of Windows or Linux can run side by side. Each machine is equivalent to a PC, since it has a complete, unmodified operating system, a unique network address, and a full complement of hardware devices."
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