Getting Started with Slurm Interactive Jobs

Introduction

Using FastX with the Stern Slurm cluster provides fast and efficient remote access to graphical applications such as R-Studio, MATLAB, xStata, and SAS. In this tutorial, we look at using the GNOME Terminal in FastX to open a Terminal, and then use that to open RStudio.

Accessing FastX

Use your Stern account to login to one of the FastX session nodes. If you are not on campus, make sure you are logged in to the NYU VPN (NYC).
See Getting An Account if you need help with setting up your account.

The available FastX login nodes:

https://fx1.scrc.nyu.edu:3300

https://fx2.scrc.nyu.edu:3300

https://fx3.scrc.nyu.edu:3300

Once logged in, you will see the FastX home page. This is where you will start, terminate and manage your sessions. 

To start a New Session, double-click on the GNOME Terminal application to launch a new Terminal session. 

Before you are taken to the session, you will have the option to choose how you want to connect to the session. You have two options:

• Connect using Browser client: Use your session in a browser window.

• Connect using the Desktop client: Download and install from Download the FastX CLient. 

Browser Client

A Gnome terminal window opens.

Running an Interactive Slurm Job

Use the srun command run an interactive Slurm job.

srun --pty --mem=8gb --time=2:00:00 --cpus-per-task=1 /bin/bash

srun                : Command to submit a job to the Slurm scheduler

--pty               : Allocate a pseudo-terminal for interactive job execution

--mem=8gb           : Request 8 gigabytes of memory for the job

--time=1:00:00      : Set a time limit of 2 hours for the job's execution

--cpus-per-task=1   : Request 1 CPU core per task

--partition=gpu     : Request a node with gpus (optional)

--partition=bigmem  : Request a node with a lot of RAM (optional)

/bin/bash           : Execute the bash shell as the job's command

You are now logged in to one of the slurm compute nodes.

Use module avail to see available software packages.

E.g., module load xstata-se/17 to load xstata. Type xstata to open a windowed xstata session.

Exit Slurm and FastX Sessions

When you are done, type exit in your slurm compute node session then exit in your FastX session.