This lesson is in the early stages of development (Alpha version)

Introduction to the Unix Shell on UD's Caviness Cluster

This workshop is an introduction to using high performance computing (HPC) systems effectively. We obviously can’t cover every case or give an exhaustive course on parallel programming in just two days of teaching time. Instead, this workshop is intended to give students a good introduction and overview of the tools available and how to use them effectively.

By the end of this workshop, students will know:

NOTE

This is a draft of the University of Delaware Information Technologies Research CyberInfrastructure (IT-RCI) Carpentry release. Comments and feedback are welcome.

This workshop has been customized for HPC users at the University of Delaware. With that in mind, we may use terms differently than they are used in traditional carpentry workshops. For example, we will use the term lesson when talking about each section or episode of this workshop.

Prerequisites

You will need to have a Caviness user account for this workshop. For information on how to get a Caviness account, please visit UD’s HPC wiki page Caviness Account Requests.

You are also required to follow the directions to install the required software that you will need for this workshop. Information on the required software can be found on the Setup page.

If you need additional help installing the required software, please visit this UD Service help page There you will find additional directions on how to install PuTTY and Xming on Windows. You can also send an email to askit@udel.edu if you encounter problems with the installation.

Coding and command line experience is not required, however it would be helpful.

Schedule

Setup Download files required for the lesson
00:00 1. What is the Caviness Cluster and Why Should You Use it? What is the Caviness Cluster and who can use it?
What can I expect to learn from this course?
00:30 2. Connecting to the Caviness Cluster How do I open a terminal?
How do I connect to a remote computer?
01:00 3. Navigating the Caviness Filesystem How do I navigate and start interacting with files and directories on Caviness?
How do I keep track of where I am in the filesystem?
01:35 4. Writing and reading files How do I create/edit text files?
How do I move/copy/delete files?
02:20 5. Wildcards and pipes How can I run a command on multiple files at once?
Is there an easy way of saving a command’s output?
03:15 6. Scripts, variables, and loops How do I turn a set of commands into a program?
04:10 Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.