This page describes the user configuration needed to run Rose and Cylc 7 on the NCI ARE Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
Start an ARE VDI session
ARE runs on the Gadi supercomputer and jobs are charged at standard NCI rates. Interactive jobs spend a large fraction of their time in idle state. Please request the VDI session to run on the cheaper normalbw queue, ask for the small size and use the code of the NCI project which supports you with its compute grant (SU).
It is recommended to use the Google Chrome browser to open ARE as it enables "copy/paste" operations across the host computer and the VDI session. If the shortcut key doesn't work, choose it from the right-click dropdown list.
You can also log into the Gadi compute node hosting the VDI session via SSH from your desktop for easier copy/paste.
Request a VDI Desktop
On the ARE dashboard page, select Virtual Desktop and request resources following the example request form below.
In the "Project" field, fill in the NCI project code you want to run your VDI session. The cost of the VDI session will be charged from the named project.
In the "Storage" field, declare all the project directories that you need access to on /scratch and /g/data. For example, add gdata/hh5 if you want to use modules maintained by the hh5 project.
The minimum PBS storage directive required is "gdata/hr22+gdata/access"+scratch/<PROJECT>, where <PROJECT> should be identical to the project code used in the Project field of the ARE VDI request form. In the example we used the project om02. Replace it with your own project code in both fields.
Launch the VDI Desktop
Once the VDI session is ready, launch it by clicking the Launch VDI Desktop button at the bottom.
Start a MATE Terminal
In the VDI session, click the MATE Terminal icon to launch a terminal.
Configure your home directory
Run the gadi-cylc-setup script to configure your home directory
The gadi-cylc-setup script makes its best effort to backup the original files and directories. If any backup fails, the script will continue to configure your home directory.
Start a MATE Terminal, run
$ /g/data/hr22/bin/gadi-cylc-setup -y
and provide the information requested by the prompts. During the setup, depending on the contents of your home directory, the script may ask you for your NCI account password.
After this setup script completes, the script pauses and asks you to hit Enter to continue. At this point, if you see any messages that indicate that the setup script has failed, use Ctrl-c to exit the script. If you need more instructions on how to respond to the initial setup script, work through this example.
Setup for each terminal session
The initial setup for your NCI account edits your ~/.bashrc file to define a setup_cylc7 function that will load the Rose/Cylc environment.
Once you have run the initial setup, on each following terminal session you have the following options.
If you just want to use Rose/Cylc without direct access to the MOSRS repository, run
$ setup_cylc7
For easier loading, uncomment the following line in ~/.bashrc by removing the leading "#" to allow automatically loading the Rose/Cylc environment on every interactive login.
# setup_cylc7
On setup failure
If the gadi-cylc-setup script has failed, run through this checklist.
Note on backups
The /g/data/hr22/bin/gadi-cylc-setup script configures your home directory so that you can edit and run Cylc 7 suites. It can potentially modify the following contents of your home directory:
.bashrc.metomi.ssh
It keeps backups in the ~/.gadi-cylc-setup directory.