Account Access & Storage

Accessing the Cluster

To access the cluster, you will have to use ssh (secure shell). If you are not connected to the math network, you will need to bounce in via the system ssh.math.umass.edu, which is accessibe off-campus. The terminal commands to access the cluster are the following, use your math department username in place of username:

ssh username@ssh.math.umass.edu
ssh rcfcluster

NOTE: Once logged in to rcfcluster, you will see a welcome message containing a warning about not being able to submit jobs without a slurm account. If this documentation was distributed to you by a member of RCF then you can disregard this warning - an account will have been created for you. Otherwise, please contact rcfsupport@groups.umass.edu to get a slurm account.

Copying & Editing Files on the Cluster

The “home” directory mounted on ssh.math.umass.edu is also mounted on rcfcluster.math.umass.edu. Therefore any file that you copy over to ssh will also be accessible on the cluster. You can find instruction for copying files with the scp command on the department website.

If you want to quickly edit your file once it’s already uploaded to the cluster, you can use a command-line editor such as vim or nano. Both of these programs allow you to edit files from within the terminal. You can google and find tutorials for both editors online - nano is more beginner-friendly, but vim is more powerful once you get the hang of it. To edit a file, simply type the name of the editor, followed by the full or relative path to the script you’d like to edit:

vim /path/to/example.py

Large Datasets / Outputs

The math account network storage (User $HOME directories) are mounted on all of the cluster nodes for your convenience. Small datasets and output files can be saved here. However, if you expect to be running jobs with very large datasets, or jobs that produce large output files, you should instead use the local storage available on the cluster. Upon request, users will be given write-access to a specific folder in /data/userdata/ for jobs that fit into this category. If you do not currently have access to local storage, and believe you need it, please contact rcfsupport@groups.umass.edu to request.