Interactive Jobs on Roar Collab

The submit nodes of RC are designed to handle very simple tasks such as connections, file editing, and submitting jobs. Performing intensive computations on submit nodes will not only be computationally inefficient, but it will also adversely impact other users’ ability to interact with the system. For this reason, users that want to perform computations interactively should do so on compute nodes using the salloc command. To work interactively on a compute node with a single processor core for one hour, use the following command:

$ salloc --nodes=1 --ntasks=1 --mem=1G --time=01:00:00

The above command submits a request to the scheduler to queue an interactive job, and when the scheduler is able to place the request, the prompt will return. The hostname in the prompt will change from the previous submit node name to a compute node. Now on a compute node, intensive computational tasks can be performed interactively. This session will be terminated either when the time limit is reached or when the exit command is entered. After the interactive session completes, the session will return to the previous submit node.

Interactive Jobs Through the Roar Collab Open OnDemand Portal

The RC Portal is a simple graphical web interface that provides users with access to RC. Users can submit and monitor jobs, manage files, and run applications using just a web browser. To access the RC Portal, users must log in using valid Penn State access account credentials and must also have an account on RC. The RC Portal is available at the following webpage: https://rcportal.hpc.psu.edu