Minnesota Supercomputer Institute

SGI Altix Cluster Quickstart Guide

This guide will provide you with the basic information needed to get up and running on this machine. For detailed operations information, see the detailed user manual.

How to login

To connect, login to altix.msi.umn.edu via ssh:

ssh -l username altix.msi.umn.edu

You only need to use -l if your altix login name is different than the login name you use on your own workstation. If ssh is not available on your machine, please contact your system administrator for an installation.

How to compile code

One needs to load the intel module (i.e. module add intel) to access the compilers. The C and C++ compiler is icc and ifort is the FORTRAN compiler. See man pages (man icc or man ifort) for a detailed explanation of all the compiling options for icc and ifort.

How to submit jobs to the queue using Portable Batch System (PBS)

To submit jobs to the queue using PBS, all you need to do is create a script file and use qsub to submit. For example, if you named the submission script "myscript", you could submit it like this:

qsub myscript

How to monitor the job status

You can check job status using the command qstat or by using the xpbs Graphical User Interface. There are many options to qstat. Of particular interest are qstat -a (which shows the status of all running jobs), qstat -f JobID and qstat -s JobID (which give detailed information and status information respectively about a job with an ID of JobID).

To check the only the status of your own jobs, use the command qstat -u userID where userID is your login name.

For a categorized summary of the status of the entire queue, use the command showq.

How to cancel/kill/remove my job

Jobs are killed or removed from the queuing system by using the command qdel. There is a man page for qdel that lists the options you can use with it. If you wish to signal a running job, you may use the command qsig. Again, please see the man page for information.