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Overview

Southpass is ARCC’s implementation of OnDemand. It is a publicly accessible site for access to ARCC’s High Performance Computing resources. With OnDemand, you can upload and download files; create, edit, submit, and monitor jobs; run GUI applications; all via a web browser, with no client software to install and configure.

Ondemand Requirements

Currently, the site is confirmed to work with newer versions of Chrome (87+), Firefox (87+), Safari, Vivadli, and Internet Explorer (11+). We are still working to expand availability to additional clients and are planning on including compatibility for mobile devices (phones and tablets) in the future. 

Note: You are required to have an account on the Teton Cluster to access the site.

Connecting to Southpass

Southpass is available on and off campus from the https://southpass.arcc.uwyo.edu website. You will be presented with UW’s Shibboleth login page. If you’re off campus, you’ll have to use your 2F authentication.

Once you are logged in you will be presented with a site that looks similar to the following:

The Ondemand primary page is broken into different areas:

  • The task bar, the gold bar at the top of the page.

  • Message area, the light yellow ribbon below the task bar.

  • Pinned Apps, the area on the bottom left of the web page.

  • Message of the day, the area on the bottom right of the web page.

The following describes what each of the task bar drop down

  1. From the top task bar you can access:

    • Apps - All Applications

    • Files - Allows you to work with files from different authorized file systems

    • Jobs - Job management tools

    • Clusters - Access to and status of different clusters

    • Interactive Applications - Allow you to run specific tasks or software

2. The message area will display useful messages to you from the system. Such as messages about your storage usage reaching its quote limit.

3. Pinned apps area allows quick access to different applications supported via Ondemand.

4. Message of the Days display any important information about the current day.

File Management and Transfers

The file drop down allows you to see your different storage space that you have access to. After selecting a storage space, you will be shown the files in that area. You can then:

  • Create a new directory

  • Create a new file

  • Download/Upload files to the current directory

  • Copy and Move files to a new location

  • Rename Files

  • Delete Files

  • Edit Files

Note: There are current file limits on uploads and downloads. The default size is currently set to approximately 10GB for a maximum file to transfer.

Job Management

From the Job drop down, One can view your jobs or all jobs currently running on the Teton Cluster. From the Job Composer subpage one can manage all aspects of running jobs on the Teton Cluster. You can:

  • Create New jobs from templates to run on the cluster.

  • Create personnel job templates to support your work

  • Submit jobs to the cluster

  • Delete jobs that have been submitted to the cluster.

  • Edit job files

  • Set job options for a job

  • Delete Job files that are not longer needed

Note: Job composer script is limited in size and defaults to approximately 65kb. If your job script is larger than this then it will not be accepted.

Shell Access

The clusters drop down provides a link to obtain shell access to the Teton cluster login nodes. This is the same as using SSH to connect to the cluster’s login nodes.

Note: Be aware that on some browsers if you have a custom shell prompt it may not display properly.

Interactive Apps

For interactive applications you will need to fill out the job page and then submit it to the cluster.

You should properly close out the Desktop when you no longer need it. This can be down by using the GUI logout feature or using the Delete button on the job page. This releases all requested resources back to the the system. You should also occasionally delete any old jobs as they are left in your home directory. This can lead to your home directory quote being consumed.

Desktops

The Interactive Desktops drop down contains items to launch certain GUI environments on Teton compute nodes (this has limited node support). You will get a complete Linux desktop when you submit the job and connect to the environment. Currently supported GUI environments are Mate and Xfce desktops. Once you have submitted the job, your job will be queued and when resources are available you will be provided a “Launch Teton XX Desktop” button. clicking this button will open a new browser tab and the GUI will be displayed.

Servers (Applications)

The interactive server part of the Apps drop down contains items to launch certain GUI applications interactively on different Teton cluster compute resources. One then gets a fully functioning application on the requested compute resources. Some of the currently supported applications include:

  • Jupyter Lab and Notebook

  • RStudio (not yet available)

  • RShiny (not yet available)

  • Paraview (not yet available)

Know Issues

  • Custom prompts may not show up in the shell windows. To get the prompts you can remove the PS1 setting from you .bashrc or manually reset the PS1 variable in the shell window.

  • On the desktop launch windows the Compression and Image Quality sliders fail to show the current setting in the slider as detailed at https://github.com/OSC/ondemand/issues/1384

  • While using the XFCE Interactive Desk, clicking on Home / File System desktop icons.

    • Resolve: Remove the .gvfs folder in your home folder.

Current User Load

SouthPass is a special partition on the cluster, currently with up to two nodes available, and a total of (2 x 28 =) 56 cpus.

  • Whenever a user starts an interactive GUI Desktop they are actually requesting a Slurm job across this partition. We do currently have some limit on the maximum number of users, and this will depend on what configuration users request i.e. 1/2 or 4 cpus and how they can be allocated across the nodes.

    • The number of current users will depend on the number of cores each individual user requests, but we have tested the service with 38 concurrent desktops running different combinations of cores.

  • But, when you request a Jupyter related session, this job will actually be allocated and run across the general cluster. Which nodes/partitions will depend on the specifics you’re requesting.

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