Notes on Linux systems in the McGillicuddy laboratory

Updated December 18, 2003




User workstations:
 Dennism      
 Beam

 Ernest (Charlie)

 Larrya

 Olgak

 Pauld

 Ruoyingh

 Valeryk
 Xingwenl

Raid server:
 Blackburn


1) Each computer has 2 processors running at 2.4GHz and 2 disks at 72G each.  One disk houses the operating system, applications, and user accounts; the other (/data) is designated for file storage by the proprietor.

 

2) Everyone has user accounts on all machines; user accounts in /home/username.

 

3) Sharing processors: when using a processor on a machine that is not your own, coordinate with that machine’s proprietor.

 

4) Sharing files: put the file you wish to share in /data on your machine; anyone in the group can access it by access via NFS/automounter (autofs).

    

cd /whoinet/hostname-data   will mount the disk automatically.

 

e.g., to automount the data disk on olgak:

 

cd /whoinet/olgak-data

 

df –h  will show the disk is mounted:

 

olgak:/data            67G   33M   63G   1% /whoinet/olgak-data 

5) File transfer between machines: use secure copy.  For example, to transfer a file from the current directory on the current machine to your home directory on another machine, type

    

scp filename username@hostname:/home/username

 

The recursive flag –r can be used to copy entire directory structures.


For copying files from a windows machine, use the freeware winscp which is available at:

http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/


6) Mass storage is available on Blackburn, a raid server with two large partitions /d1 and /d2. Each user has a directory in both partitions for mass storage that can be accessed via autofs through /whoinet/blackburn-d1/user_directory and /whoinet/Blackburn-d2/user_directory.  Note that the syntax for accessing Blackburn from the SGI systems is different (/whoinet/Blackburn/Blackburn/d1/user_directory and /whoinet/Blackburn/Blackburn/d2/user_directory).

 

7) User backups: Proprietors’ home directories on their machines are backed up with the legato client through a mount point on dennism. Note that home directories of users other than the proprietor of the machine will not be backed up.Full backups occur once every three months, with incremental backups performed on a daily basis thereafter.  Only one full backup is archived at a time, so the furthest one can reach back in time is three months.  Users should verify they can retrieve file using the gui nwrecover or the text based recover program. You will need to ssh dennism and include the server name on the command line when you start the application (ie. nwrecover –s thor.whoi.edu). It has an online help book that describes how to use it.  Basically just browse to the file or directory you want, put a check mark beside it and click the start button. It will ask before overwriting any existing files and give the option to rename them (the default action is to restore to the same location as the original). You can also select a date to browse through (say you have a file that changes every day and you need it from one month ago). The default is to restore from the most recent backup.  User files are located in the /mnt directory.  For example, user files for larrya are found at /mnt/larrya-home/larrya/.

 

8) Archiving: users should archive finished products on permanent media.  A CD burner is available on each workstation; a DVD burner can be borrowed from Art Newhall in the Bigelow 2nd floor computer room.


9) System management.  Jonathan Murray is the system administrator.  Requests for system-level tasks should be sent to Jonathan with a copy to Dennis:

 

jmurray@whoi.edu ,  dmcgillicuddy@whoi.edu



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