The Interactive Front-end Server
The interactive front-end server is the common point of entry to CSCS facilities for users.
Most CSCS facilities are only accessible from authorized internet domains or individual IP addresses. The primary purposes of the front-end interactive server is to act as a common point of entry which is accessible worldwide on the public internet, and that therefore allows access to other CSCS compute servers from internet addresses which would not otherwise be able to access these other machines. For people who are frequently on travel with laptops that use dynamic IP addresses, the ability to access the front-end interactive server from anywhere in the world allows uninterrupted access to CSCS compute facilities and data stored at CSCS.
How to connect to the interactive server
The hostname of the interactive server is bar.cscs.ch. Users worldwide can connect directly to the interactive server using the ssh(1) command. This is an example of how an ssh screen might look like:
> ssh bar.cscs.ch
Last login: Mon May 11 08:41:01 2009
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IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR USERS of CSCS facilities
www-users.cscs.ch - help@cscs.ch - +41 91 610 82 10
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CSCS next preventive maintenance is scheduled for:
>>> Jul 09, 2009 <<<username@bar:~$
Users Data
The home directory of the users ( /users/<username> ) on the front-end machine is shared via NFS among the different computing platforms at CSCS, and therefore all the files you have in your home directory on the interactive server are also available on the compute servers.
In theory your jobs on those systems could use your files without requiring explicit copying with FTP or RCP, but due to the slow NFS access, the use of this link within compute jobs is discouraged and you should only use this capability on the interactive nodes of the compute servers..
Your home directory on the interactive server is accessible from other computing platforms at CSCS via a symbolic link named "bar" in your home directory. As this link mounts your interactive server home directory over a slow NFS link, the use of this sharing mechanism should be avoided for all jobs which run on compute nodes (for this use large fast temporary local filesystems) - on the CSCS HPC platforms this link is only mounted on the interactive nodes, and is not mounted on the compute nodes.
The home directory is backed up on a daily basis.
CSCS users who require disk space for large data sets can exploit the capabilities of the /project file system.