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Please be aware that the system administration team reserves the right for computer system maintenance on the 1st Wednesday of each month. Computers and storage systems might experience short and announced outages during these days.

Getting an Account

You will need a valid SLAC UNIX account in order to use the LCLS computing system. The instructions for getting a SLAC UNIX account are here:

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lcls/users/logistics.html#compaccts

Your UNIX account must be enabled in the LCLS system in order to have access to data and elog. This happens automatically if your account is created with XU as its primary group. If your primary UNIX group is not XU, make a request of enabling your account in the LCLS system by sending an email to:

pcds-help@slac.stanford.edu

If you forgot your password or if your account has been disabled send an email to:

account-services@slac.stanford.edu

Getting Access to the System

You can get into the LCLS photon computing system in the NEH by ssh'ing to one of these nodes:

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Each control room has a number of nodes for local login. These nodes have access to the Internet and are reachable from pslogin and psdevnamed psusr<id>.

The controls and DAQ nodes used for operating an instrument work in kiosk mode so you don't need a personal account to run an experiment from the control room. Remore Remote access to these nodes is not allowed for normal users.

You will need a valid SLAC UNIX account in order to run your analysis in the NEH system. This UNIX account must be enabled in the NEH system in order to grant access to data and elog. The instructions for getting a SLAC UNIX account are here:

http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/lcls/users/logistics.html#compaccts

Getting Access to the Electronic Logbook

The elog is accessible at the following location:

https://pswww.slac.stanford.edu/apps/logbook

Each user is allowed to view and edit only the experiments she/he belongs to. The elog can also be accessed through the experiment shared account. The PI for the experiment is the custodian of the password of the experiment shared account and he/she can share it with the members of the experiment group. The name of the shared account is the same as the experiment's name.

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Running the Analysis

The analysis framework is documented in the Data Analysis page. This section describes the nodes which are available for running the analysis.

Instrument Dedicated Nodes

These nodes are reserved for the users who are currently running an experiment. Each instrument has three dedicated interactive compute systems:

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The general specifications for these nodes are:

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In order to get access to the interactive farm, ssh to the address psana. A load-balancing mechanism will connect you to the least loaded of the nodes in the farm.

This farm is currently made of six servers with the following general specifications:

• 8-cores, Opteron 2384

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• , 8GB, diskless, 10Gb/s

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Batch Farm

Login first to psdev or pslogin (from SLAC) or psimport or psexport (from anywhere). From there you can submit a job with the following command:

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You may check on the status of your jobs using the bjobs command.

The batch farm is made of sixty 8-cores Xeon E5520 with 1Gb/s connection to the data.

For a more detailed description and more more LSF commands, please see

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/unix-hpc.html

The batch farm is made of sixty servers with the following general specifications:

• 8 cores, Xeon E5520, 24GB, 500GB disk, 1Gb/s

Data Storage

LCLS provides space for all your experiment's data at no cost for you. This includes the measurements as well as derived data from your analysis software.

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There is a web interface to the experimental data accessible via

https://pswww.slac.stanford.edu/apps/explorer/

The web interface also allows you to generate file lists that can be fed into bbcp to export your data from SLAC to your home institution. You can use psexport or psimport for copying your data.

See the DataExportation Data Exportation page for more information.

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Getting Help

The first line of help is available by sending email to pcdshelp@slac.stanford.edu.

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