Quick Start Guide

This guide will help you get an account, login, and run your first job on the cluster.


1. Requesting an account

Request an account on the Mill by filling out this form.  You may also have your advisor fill out the form to request an account on a research cluster dedicated to the department.  

2. Logging in

Using a terminal program (eg, PuTTy, secure shell, ssh for a terminal) connect to the host foundry.mst.edu using your Missouri S&T SSO ID and password. 

ssh username@foundry.mst.edu

3. Copy code(s) and data to login node

Using winscp, scp/sftp from the terminal or your secure shell application to upload any programs, scripts and data files you will need to run your code.

4. Creating a batch script

Create a text file that you will use to submit your job. You can upload this as in step 3 or create in place in the terminal with a text editor. An easy to use editor is nano. Here is a quick sample batch script for running a single job with a default resource allocation of 1 CPU running for 10 minutes.

batch.sub

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=Change_ME                     
#SBATCH --ntasks=1                                               
#SBATCH --time=0-00:10:00                                  
#SBATCH --mail-type=begin,end,fail,requeue   
#SBATCH --export=all                                              
#SBATCH --out=Foundry-%j.out 
 
# %j will substitute to the job's id
#Now run your executables just like you would in a shell script.
#
Slurm will set the working directory as the directory the job was submitted from.
#e.g. if you submitted from /home/blspcy/softwaretesting your job would run in that directory.
 
#(executables) (options) (parameters)
echo "this is a general submission script"
echo "I've submitted my first batch job successfully"


For more detail visit the Mill Public Wiki Page.

5. Submitting your job

Assuming you saved the above batch script to batch.sub in your home directory you can submit the job with sbatch like this:

sbatch batch.sub

You will see the job id for the job you just submitted and will receive an email when the job starts when it ends, and if it should fail for any reason.

6. Checking the status of your job

You can check the status of your job in the queue using the squeue command.

squeue -u username

 

 

Detailed guide to using the Mill Cluster
(Mill Public Wiki)