InteractiveMachines
Introduction
At Fermilab there are three groups computers available for interactive use by members of the Mu2e collaboration; all of these machines run SLF linux. To use one of these machines, use a kerberos ticket (kinit, see authentication) on your desktop or laptop and ssh to one of the systems described below: GPCF, detsim or fnalu.
The Computing Division's plan is that GPCF is Mu2e's primary interactive computing resource and you would typically work here. We are secondary users on detsim; if cycles are available, we should feel free to use them. You may use these machines for all usual interactive purposes, including running test jobs interactively. If you expect a job to run for more than 3 hours then submit it to one of the batch systems or the Grid. You can edit the Mu2e web pages from GPCF but not from detsim.
We do not recommend using fnalu for any new projects; use it only for legacy projects that are already established on fnalu and nowhere else.
If you have difficulty logging in, seeing your files after you have logged in, or if you cannot open a window from a Mu2e machine and display it on your laptop (desktop), see the instructions for logging in.
GPCF
The General Physics Computing Facility (GPCF) was developed by the Fermilab Computing Division to serve as the interactive computing farm for use by the Intensity Frontier experiments plus other new, small experiments. Almost all of our interactive development work is done here. You can submit jobs and edit the mu2e web pages. All project disks are mounted, as well as the cvmfs code server and dCache distributed disk server for large datasets.
Mu2e has five nodes which are virtual installations of SLF6. A virtual system looks like a single machine but is actually a copy of the operating system that may share the hardware with other copies of the OS. These act like 4-core machines.
The machine names are mu2egpvm01 through mu2egpvm05. There is a an alias mu2evm which will resolve to one of the less busy machines.
ssh mu2evm
More information can be found at these resources
detsim
The machine named detsim is dedicated to detector simulations for new experiments. The primary users of detsim are those developing detector designs for future lepton colliders ( muon colliders, ILC, CLIC ). Prior to the availability of GPCF, Mu2e was one of the primary users of the machine and all of our software was established there. At present there is very little activity from the other users so detsim is effectively a Mu2e-only machine; if the other groups become active again we may be asked to stop using detsim.
detsim is a 32 core machine running SLF5. Currently (early 2017) we do not support our code on SLF5, so this node is not very useful. We hope to install SLF6 in the near future.
detsim has different home disks and different local scratch disk than the GPCF machines. You can submit to the grid fro mhere, but not edit the mue2 web site. detsim sees all of the Mu2e project disks.
fnalu
fnalu is the remnants of the original Fermilab general purpose unix farm, first deployed deployed in the mid-1990's. FNALU is a much smaller resource than either GPCF or detsim, both in terms of CPU and disk space. On Feb 1, 2012 FNALU will be reduced to 2 interactive nodes and its batch facility will be shut down completely. The only reason to mention FNALU at all is that the original Mu2e work using MECO GMC was done on FNALU and that code contain some hard coded path names that only work on FNALU. The Mu2e Offline software is not, and will not, deployed on FNALU. We strongly recommend that any new projects be started on GPCF.