Connecting

Accounts

Account Activation

All individuals who have an active Penn State access account may request access to Roar Collab (RC) by submitting an account request.

Non-PSU Affiliates

For any external collaborators, a university faculty member must set up a sponsored access account with the university Accounts Office to provide the collaborator with an access account. Once the collaborator's access account is active, submit an account request to RC.

Connecting to Roar Collab

Users can connect to RC either through the RC Portal (rcportal.hpc.psu.edu) or via an ssh connection to the submit.hpc.psu.edu host.

Using the Roar Collab Portal

Users can connect to RC through the RC Portal powered by Open OnDemand. Open OnDemand is an NSF-funded, open-source HPC portal that provides users with a simple graphical web interface to HPC resources. Users can submit and monitor jobs, manage files, and run applications using just a web browser. The RC Portal offers many familiar graphical development environments including JupyterLab, RStudio, and software-specific GUIs.

The Portal features multiple built-in tools which can be accessed via the top menu bar on the Portal:

  • Apps: Lists all available Portal apps
  • Files: Provides a convenient graphical file manager and lists primary accessible file locations
  • Jobs: Lists active jobs and allows use of the Job Composer
  • Clusters: Provides shell access to submit nodes on RC
  • Interactive Apps: Provides access to all the Portal interactive apps and interactive servers
  • User Tools: Provides access to the User Filesystem Quotas display
  • My Interactive Sessions: Lists any active sessions

Connecting via ssh

Those who prefer to utilize only the command line environment can connect using Secure Shell (SSH).

Through the terminal on macOS or Linux or the command prompt on Windows, users can connect using the following command:

$ ssh <userid>@submit.hpc.psu.edu

To connect, an RC account linked to an active Penn State access account user ID and password is required. By default, port 22 is used for secure shell connections. A password must be entered and then multi-factor authentication must be completed successfully to complete the login.

Note

The connection to the system is made with a submit node. Submit nodes are
configured primarily to handle incoming user connections and non-intensive computational tasks like editing small files. To perform computational tasks, compute resources must be used. See Submitting Jobs for more details.

Linux Commands Quick Reference

Command Description
ls Lists the files in the current working directory
cd Changes the current directory in order to navigate to a new directory
mv Moves a file or directory to a new location
mkdir Makes a directory
rmdir Removes an empty directory
touch Creates a file
rm Removes a file (or a directory using the -r option)
locate Locates a file in a directory
clear Clears the terminal of all previous outputs
history Shows the history of previous commands
find Finds files in a directory
grep Searches files or outputs
awk A programming language for pattern scanning and processing
id Shows the list of groups for a user
du Shows disk usage
env Prints the current environment variables
less Displays a file
cp Copies a file (or a directory using the -r option)
alias Creates an alias, which is essentially an abbreviated command
pwd Prints the current working directory
chmod Changes file permissions
chgrp Changes group for a file or directory
ldd Shows the shared libraries required for an executable or library
top Displays the node usage
/usr/bin/time Shows time and memory statistics for a command being run
bg Continues running a paused task in the background
fg Brings a background task into the foreground
Ctrl + c Kills a process
Ctrl + z Suspends a process
Ctrl + r Searches the command history for a string

Special characters are useful in many commands.

Character Description
~ Indicates the home directory
. Indicates current working directory
.. Indicates parent of current working directory
* Wildcard character for any string
| Connects the output of a command to the input of another
> Redirects a command output

For complete details on any command listed above and more, use man <command> in a terminal session to display the manual page for the command or search online for more detailed usage of fundamental Linux commands.