Computational OPtimization Solutions cluster managed by the Math Faculty Computing Facility University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Accounts and Access

Because the cluster was funded by CFI for specific research purposes, you must be associated with the professors whose research projects make use of the cluster. They are: Tom Coleman, Steve Vavasis, Henry Wolkowicz.

CFI rules prevent the sharing of CFI-funded equipment with anybody else, as the intent is to provide infrastructure specifically for the research programs of the participating faculty members, not general servers for anybody in the various departments.

To obtain an account on the cluster, please have one of the professors send a request on your behalf to accounts@math.

Common Filespace

There is an external storage array that is directly attached to linopt.math. Home directories and scratch space are on this array. All the Linux nodes mount these file systems by NFS. As well, all the Windows nodes mount them via Samba. So no matter what machine in the cluster you log into, your one home directory is seen by all of them.

On Linux, your home directory is at /home/userid, and there is scratch space at /scratch/userid. The former will be backed up, while the latter will not, so the expectation is that you can store large temporary data in /scratch but keep your source code and important results in /home.

On Windows, your home directory is at the P: drive and your scratch directory is at the Q: drive.

Remote Access

There are two headnodes for the cluster, one for Linux and one for Windows. Each is always available, meaning they do not switch between the two operating systems. On the public network, you can access only the head nodes. You cannot access the cluster nodes from the public network. They are on a private internal network and are reachable only by going through the head nodes first.

Access to Linux

To access the Linux side of the cluster, connect to the Linux head node linopt.math.uwaterloo.ca.

If your own system is a Unix, Linux, or Mac system, use the ssh command, e.g.
% ssh linopt.math
Include the -X option to enable X11 forwarding for graphical applications.

If your own system is a Windows system, you'll need an X11 activity such as Xwin32 or Xming on your system in order to have a graphical login session. Or, you'll need something like Putty for an ssh-based command line session.

Access to Windows

To access the Windows side of the cluster, connect to the Windows head node winopt.math.uwaterloo.ca from your own system. Winopt.math is not licenced for Windows Terminal Server so it will accept a maximum of two concurrent RDP/rdesktop sessions. Furthermore, as a Domain Controller, it will not accept RDP sessions unless we explicitly enable you. The expected normal way of accessing the Windows cluster is by using the Microsoft HPC cluster client application.

If your own system is a Windows system, you'll need the Microsoft HPC cluster client software installed on your machine in order to interact with the cluster manager. If necessary, you can ask us to enable your use of the Remote Desktop activity (or the mstsc command) to connect with a normal desktop session.

If your own system is a Unix, Linux, or Mac system, perhaps you could use a Windows virtual machine installed on your system, and then run the HPC cluster client software within that VM. If necessary, you can ask us to enable your use of RDesktop.

Email

We don't want the cluster to become a spam attractor, so your account has been created with a .forward file to forward your mail to your account in the central "math" computing environment. Please continue to use your central mail account rather than using machines in the cluster for your mail.

Send feedback to:

COPS Home | University of Waterloo.

Last Updated 24 January 2011 by Robyn Landers.