Getting started in CLIM & ESTIMR

Welcome to LSCE! You are probably reading this page because you are a new intern student, visitor, etc… This page will help you survive your first steps at LSCE, at least survive the computers…

Using your own computer at LSCE?

No need to try to connect your laptop to the LSCE wire network, it will not work!

The best you can do is use the eduroam or guest wifi network, if your office is close enough to one of the access points.

Warning! You can't connect directly to the LSCE servers from the wifi network. If you need to do that, you will have to connect to a server outside LSCE first, and then back to LSCE

Accessing the LSCE intranet

There is a lot of information available on the intranet, but you can only access it from a computer connected to the LSCE network: https://intranet.lsce.ipsl.fr/

Everything about the LSCE servers (and other software and hardware information): https://intranet.lsce.ipsl.fr/informatique/index.php

Reading the mails with the webmail or Thunderbird

As soon as you have a LSCE e-mail address, make sure it is added to the clim or estimr mailing list

Printers

Accessing the CEA saclay intranet

Web site: http://www-saclay.cea.fr/index.php

You can only access it from the CEA network! This intranet is the place where you can get information about:

CEA buses

Security training registration

Setting up your desktop computer

Everybody working for CLIM & ESTIMR gets a computer that can be connected to the LSCE network. Please take the time to read the instructions below, that may help make your life easier

Windows 7 computer

Read the notes in Windows 7 notes, especially the Basic Windows 7 Configuration section

Getting administrator's rights

Make sure you know what you are doing and that you are not executing a virus asking you suspicious access rights!

If an application requests administrator's rights to install something or make changes to the computer, and you are sur it's not a virus, use the .\adminuser account and the adminuser password you got when your computer was configured, or ask the system administrators.

Linux computer

⇐ Add some stuff here

Using the root acount

Do not use the root account or privileges if you don't know exactly what you are doing!

Depending on what you need to do:

run a single command with the root access rights
sudo command

become root in a terminal
sudo su -

use the root password when a program asks for it. Be sure the programs has legitimate reasons to ask for the root password!

Mac

Sorry, you are on your own, but it's soooo easy to use, right?

Which Linux servers should you use?

There are lots of things you can do directly on your local Win7 or Linux desktop (displaying pdf, images, using a text editor, …), rather than directly on the servers. Never forget that your local desktop has access to the remote disks on the Linux servers.

Otherwise, use the appropriate Linux servers. The load balancing system will send you to the server that has currently the smallest load

asterixN (ssh asterix, or ssh asterix.lscelb): use these servers for the usual day-to-day work (things that use less than 1 Gb, don't use 100% CPU for a long time)

obelixN (ssh obelix, or ssh obelix.lscelb): use these servers for interactive processes that will need more ram and/or CPU during a longer time

the batch system for really heavy duty programs

Determining the load of a Linux server

If the Linux server you are working on seems slow, or if you want to get an idea of the resources you are using, you should use the top command

jypeter@obelix4 - ...jypeter - 46 >top
top - 17:48:51 up 8 days, 23:43, 29 users, load average: 1.22, 1.38, 1.98
Tasks: 324 total, 2 running, 320 sleeping, 2 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 12.6%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 87.4%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 32877756k total, 14706188k used, 18171568k free, 21372k buffers
Swap: 33554428k total, 1628972k used, 31925456k free, 14105940k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
10193 mpeau 20 0 302m 4336 2272 R 100.0 0.0 7033:08 emacs
16504 mpeau 20 0 110m 2008 1228 S 0.7 0.0 0:00.13 tcsh
26344 dzhu 20 0 1635m 20m 3880 S 0.3 0.1 0:44.90 ipython
1 root 20 0 21448 1108 892 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.61 init
[...]

The top lines give you some summary information about the system, but you should monitor the memory usage (VIRT and RES), CPU and TIME columns. By default, top will will put the processes using the more CPU at the top (as shown above). You can see above that the emacs text editor has clearly crashed, because it should not use 100% CPU for such a long time

If you type M, the processes will be sorted my memory usage, as shown below

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
16092 jchang 20 0 8488m 8.1g 7912 R 99.6 25.9 1:41.38 idl
23256 pvait 20 0 232m 70m 2632 S 0.0 0.2 0:01.36 R
26344 dzhu 20 0 1635m 20m 3880 S 0.0 0.1 0:44.87 ipython
10619 astege 20 0 954m 9292 2664 S 0.0 0.0 0:40.67 gedit
1362 nslcd 20 0 442m 6056 2208 S 0.0 0.0 2:13.98 nslcd
16238 twang 20 0 128m 5068 2076 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.05 gconfd-2
10193 mpeau 20 0 302m 4336 2272 R 99.9 0.0 7024:13 emacs
[...]

Other useful keys:

q	Quit
c	Display the command line options of the running processes
u	List only the processes of a specific user

Which disks should you use?

The home directory

The scratch directory

Project specific directories

Useful documentation

Getting help from the LSCE system administrators

Send a mail to: help-lsce@lsce.ipsl.fr

Accessing the LSCE servers from outside the LSCE

The only way to access LSCE the LSCE server is to connect first to the idefix1.extra.cea.fr gateway server. Unless you are on a machine that is outside LSCE, but still on the CEA network (e.g. one of the machines of the CEA computing center)

Send a mail to help-lsce@lsce.ipsl.fr and request an access to the idefix1 server

Use ssh to connect to idefix1

ssh

What next?

Ask you advisor, who has probably already told you everything that was listed above, so you did not really learn anything new by reading this page

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