As of this writing, access to S3DF is still by invitation. You can self-register following instructions here.
This page gives a very brief introduction to SLAC's new S3DF (SLAC Shared Scientific Data Facility) cluster to help you get started. Note that, as of April 15 2024, onboarding involves automatic creation of both Active Directory ("windows") and unix accounts. The AD account is only useful for cyber training and logging into the Service Now ticket web portal.
For what follows, we assume you already have a Unix account and your main intent is to run the Fermitools/Fermipy. During the transition, issues are discussed in the #s3df-migration slack channel. You can also join the #help-sdf channel if you wish to see SLAC-wide discussion of S3DF issues.
See the main S3DF documentation for detailed information about how to log in, use the SLURM batch system, and so on. Specify --account fermi:users.
Basically, ssh to s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu and from there ssh to fermi-devl (no .slac.stanford.edu; it is a load balancer, but there is only one node so far) to do actual interactive work. The login nodes are not meant for doing analysis or accessing data. Of course, real computational intensive tasks are meant for the batch system and not the interactive nodes either. Send email to s3df-help at slac.stanford.edu for issues.
Account maintenance
Unix Password:
SLAC currently requires a password change every 6 months. You can use https://unix-password.slac.stanford.edu/ to do this.
Cyber Training
Cyber training comes up annually. If you have an Active Directory (aka Windows) account, just follow the links.
There are issues with the training system at the moment if you only have a unix account, so here is (hopefully) temporary advice on how to navigate it (note that if you got an email saying your training is coming due, the SLAC ID (SID) is embedded in the url in the email - that is the xxxxxxx in the instructions below - if your account has not been disabled, you can ssh to rhel6-64 and issue the command:
res list user <your unix account name>
which will give your SID (along with your account status).
if none of that works, ask your SLAC Point of Contact):
You need to go to the url below; DO NOT click on forgot password. Give it your system id (SID) number (xxxxxxx).
Note: the interim training password is "SLACtraining2005!". If it does not work, email slac-training, asking them to reset it. Then go back to the original link, enter SID and this password. Then do CS100.
https://slactraining.csod.com/
Basically, always use the SID where "user name" is requested.
passwordless ssh to fermi-devl
You can modify your .ssh config to allow direct passwordless access from your device to fermi-devl, by adding this to your .ssh/config file on your end:
Host slac* User <you> Host slacl Hostname s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu Host slacd Hostname fermi-devl ProxyJump slacl
and then add your e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
from from your device to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
at SLAC, using:
ssh-copy-id <you>@s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu
For those using the cvs server on centaurusa outside from slac, you have to add a proxyjump for centaurusa. Since the cvs server is written in all CVS/Root files of a cvs package, you have to use the following solution:
Host centaurusa.slac.stanford.edu Hostname centaurusa ProxyJump slacl
Shared accounts
To access shared accounts (e.g., glast, glastraw), you will likely need to get a token by running kinit first. Then, you can ssh or ksu to the account. You must also be listed in the .k5login file in the home directory for the account. Anyone who already has access the account can add you to this file.
.bash_profile
.bashrc:
- a directory gets added to your home dir, called profile_d. It points back to the group equivalent in /sdf/group/fermi/sw/ and includes the contents of those conf files into your session's bashrc. Group-level settings go there, eg $LATCalibRoot.
- don't overwrite your .bash_profile or you'll lose the code that does this:
# SLAC S3DF - source all files under ~/.profile.d
if [[ -e ~/.profile.d && -n "$(ls -A ~/.profile.d/)" ]]; then
source <(cat $(find -L ~/.profile.d -name '*.conf'))
fi
Disk space
- Your home directory is in weka (/sdf/home/<first letter of your userid>/<your userid>) with 30 GB of space. This space is backed up and is where code, etc., should go.
- We have group space at /sdf/group/fermi/:
- some directories are under /sdf/data/fermi/, but we provide links into the group directory tree for easier access
- includes shared software, including conda envs for Fermitools and containers for running rhel6 executables
- Fermi-supplied user (i.e., on top of your home directory) space.
- You can find it in /sdf/group/fermi/u/<you>. There is a symlink to it, called "fermi-user", in your home directory for convenience.
- after gpfs is retired in late 2023, this is where your larger user space will be.
- group space in /sdf/group/fermi/g/ - a one-time copy has been done of all the gpfs g/ directories, under /nfs/farm/g/glast/g/.
- all of glast afs has been copied to /sdf/group/fermi/a/
- Fermi web space (/afs/slac/www/exp/glast) has been copied to /sdf/data/fermi/afs-www/
- the nfs u<xx> partitions were copied to /sdf/group/fermi/n/ (including u52 which contains the GlastRelease rhel6 builds)
- your user/group space on the old clusters is not directly accessible from s3df
- We're still providing additional user space from the old cluster, available on request via the slac-helplist mailing list. It is not backed up. This space is natively gpfs. User directories are available under: /gpfs/slac/fermi/fs2/u/<your_dir>.
- a read-only copy of all user directories on /nfs/farm/g/glast/u was made in mid-January 2024 and can be found at /sdf/data/fermi/gpfs-u/
- During the transition, read-only mounts of afs and gpfs are available on the interactive nodes (not batch!).
- afs is just the normal afs path, eg to your home directory (/afs/slac/u/ ...) - you may need to issue "aklog" to get an afs token.
- gpfs is /fs/gpfs/slac/fermi/fs2/u/ ...
- We're still providing additional user space from the old cluster, available on request via the slac-helplist mailing list. It is not backed up. This space is natively gpfs. User directories are available under: /gpfs/slac/fermi/fs2/u/<your_dir>.
- Scratch space:
- $SCRATCH = /sdf/scratch/users/<username_initial>/<username>: quota 100GB/per user. The space is visible on all interactive and batch nodes. Old data will be purged when overall space is needed, even if your usages is under the quota
- /lscratch: On each batch node, this is a local space. It is shared by all users. You are encourage to create your own sub-dir when running your job, and clean up your space (to zero) at the end of your job. Debris left behind by jobs will be purged periodically. The size of the /lscratch are subject to change and please refer to the table in Slurm partition for info about their size.
Handy urls
- Fermi s3df accounts status
- fermi-user and groups usage/quotas
- fermi-devl server metrics
- slurm
- weka filesystem
Access to SDF files
If you were working on SDF, note that S3DF is completely separate (aside from the account name). Even though path names might look similar, they are on different file systems. You can still access all your SDF files by prepending "/fs/ddn/" to the paths you were used to.
Software and Containers
Fermitools and other analysis software (e.g., 3ML) are available via shared Conda installation, so you don't need to install Conda yourself. See Fermitools/Conda Shared Installation at SLAC. If you do want your own Conda, you shouldn't install it in your home directory due to quota limits; put it in your Fermi-supplied user space. Follow the S3DF documentation instructions to install Conda and set a prefix path for the Conda installation that will put it and any environments you create in your group-provided space. However, you should use a prefix to your personal space, e.g., /sdf/group/fermi/u/$USER/miniconda3, instead of the path in their example.
You can also run a RHEL6 Singularity container (for apps that are not portable to RHEL/Centos7). See Using RHEL6 Singularity Container.
Slurm Batch Usage
For generic advice on running in batch, see Running on SLAC Central Linux. Note that the actual batch system has changed and we have not updated the doc to reflect that. This is advice on copying data to local scratch, etc. If you find you cannot submit jobs to the fermi:users repo, ask for access in the #s3df-migration slack channel.
- LSB_JOBID -> SLURM_JOB_ID
- scratch space during job execution:
- at job start, a directory is automatically created on the scratch of the worker: ${LSCRATCH} = /lscratch/${USER}/slurm_job_id_${SLURM_JOB_ID}
- once all of a user's jobs on a node are completed/exited, their corresponding LSCRATCH directory on that host is deleted.
You need to specify an account and "repo" on your slurm submissions. The repos allow subdivision of our allocation to different uses. There are 4 repos available under the fermi account. The format is "–-account fermi:<repo>" where repo is one of:
- default (jobs are pre-emptible - if "paying jobs" need slots, pre-emptible jobs will be killed)
- L1
- other-pipelines
- users
L1 and other-pipelines are restricted to known pipelines. Non-default repos have quality of service (qos) defaulting to normal (non-pre-emptible).
At time of writing, there is no accounting yet. When that is enabled, we'll have to decide how to split up our allocation into the various repos.
S3DF Slurm organizes the different hardware resource type under Slurm partitions. Slurm doesn't have the concept of batch queue. Users can specify the resource their job needs (because, for example a 12-core CPU request can be satisfied by different types of CPUs). The following is an example script that submits a job to Slurm:
#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=fermi:users
##SBATCH --partition=milano
#SBATCH --job-name=my_first_job
#SBATCH --output=output-%j.txt
#SBATCH --error=output-%j.txt
#SBATCH --ntasks=1
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=2
#SBATCH --mem-per-cpu=4g
#SBATCH --time=0-00:10:00
hostname
Note that the specifying "--gpus a100:1" option is preferred over the specifying "–partition=ampere" (the latter is not needed). If GPU is not requested, you job will not have access to a GPU even if it is landed on an ampere node.
Using cron
There is now a dedicated machine for cron: sdfcron001. Cron has been disabled on all other nodes. See:
https://s3df.slac.stanford.edu/public/doc/#/service-compute?id=s3df-cron-tasks
You might want to keep a backup of your crontab file:
crontab -l > ~/crontab.backup
Then to re-add the jobs back in:
crontab ~/crontab.backup
command line xrootd access
xrootd CLI commands are available via cvmfs:
module load osg/client-latest
which xrdcp
module unload osg/client-latest #when done with xrootd
Oracle access
Oracle drivers etc have been installed in /sdf/group/fermi/sw/oracle/. The setup.sh file in the driver-version directory sets up everything needed to issue sqlplus commands from the command line.
Using Datacat & Pipeline-II
/sdf/home/g/glast/a/datacat/prod/datacat
/sdf/home/g/glast/a/pipeline-II/prod/pipeline
cvs access
For now, we are leaving the live cvs repo on nfs. The cvs client has been installed on the iana nodes.
Set:
CVSROOT=:ext:$<USER>@centaurusa.slac.stanford.edu:/nfs/slac/g/glast/ground/cvs
Calibrations
Calibrations go to
$LATCalibRoot=/sdf/group/fermi/ground/releases/calibrations/
Write access is controlled by the glast-calibs permissions group.
the environment variable is set in the group profile. (Note: /sdf/data/fermi/a/ground/releases/calibrations is historical and not to be used)
unix group management
If you manage any of the unix groups from the old NFS cluster (eg glast-catalog, glast-skywatch etc), maintenance is still only available from the rhel6-64 machines, using the ypgroup command. This will change once the legacy filesystems go away.
5 Comments
Tyrel Johnson
(I'll put this as a comment but if someone decides to add it to the tips above we can delete this. I know Dan K. has figured out the same thing, maybe with even more useful info. If anything I've done/said below is inaccurate or incomplete, please corect it.)
Useful note for updating code submitting with bsub on the old machines to sbatch on slurm. Note that these calls are made in a bash script which takes a couple of command line arguments, defines the myimage variable and does a loop to submit several jobs. This page was helpful.
the old command I used
the new command (edited to include the account option on 9 Oct. 2023)
Picking this apart, as I understand it.
First, obvious thing, instead of bsub, use sbatch. Everything is nicely setup so this is all in your PATH already.
There doesn't seem to be an equivalent queue to say how long your job is, my understanding is that slurm handles this based on how much time you request. So -q long -W 20:00 all gets wrapped into --time 10:00:00. Note, the old code specified 20 hours but if we did a one for one switch it would be 20 minutes. Following what others had posted about the speed of the new cluster, I cut the maximum time in half (and I could likely cut this down to 5:00:00 to be honest and still finish with plenty to spare)
Specifying that I want centos7 computers is replaced by specificying either the roma or milano partition, so -R centos7 get's replaced with --partition milano. (NOTE: I've edited this part as specifying two partitions doesn't seem to work anymore and, following the thread on slack, milano seems the best choice for now)
These jobs are not meant to be multi-core or multi-node...so maybe someone else can talk about how that should work, but I only need one cpu and one node for the task . It is entirely possible that the default values would be fine, but it seemed like a good idea to be explicit and include --nodes 1 --cups-per-task 1.
I think the previous system picked up the job name based on the script being called, but it seemed like a good idea to specify one with --job-name gcrRun_$2_$i, but I will say that the way things are displayed with the squeue command makes even this relatively short job name not display fully (anyone have tips for that?).
For directing the output, perhaps the syntax wouldn't actually change but I couldn't find anything tell me that "-o" would work, so -o becomes --output.
And then, instead of just giving the command (all the singularity exec stuff) it needs to be specified with the --wrap="..." stuff.
Once this is all done, monitor the jobs with:
where <user_name> is your user name, otherwise you get to see the whole queue, which is sometimes not super helpful.
David A. Smith
Hi Tyrel, your comments have been helpful for me.
Philippe taught me
and that works nicely (as per his suggestion, I alias it to "sjobs"). Nota bene, it really is "me" as opposed to your user name.
Else, today I learned that to kill a batch job you need
where you can get your job's id from the squeue command.
Tyrel Johnson
That is helpful, thanks David!
Tyrel Johnson
Posting here in case it is helpful since I didn't see it listed above. From this page, if you need to scp/rsync files from the new machines, use s3dfdtn.slac.stanford.edu. In my case, I keep a backup of some of the CAL calibration files on the NRL machines but I don't seem to be able to scp/rsync from non-NRL machines; thus, I have to initiate the data transfer from the NRL machine and, clearly, s3dflogin doesn't work but the s3dfdtn does.
Tyrel Johnson
Of course, I used this, it worked, and then went to use it again and it failed several times in a row, with the message "Connection closed by 134.79.23.43 port 22"...I waited a minute or two, tried again, and it worked, but then the same process repeated. I'm almost certain it wasn't an issue of entering my password incorrectly and the files are only a few hundred MB.