IDL Instructions for Discover

Index

1. Log Into Discover

Log into Discover or Data Analysis Nodes using ssh with X11 forwarding with the following command:

  $ ssh -X userid@login.nccs.nasa.gov

or

  $ ssh -X userid@dali.nccs.nasa.gov

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2. Submit an Interactive PBS Job to Access IDL

The following command will submit an interactive job to the correct node that has access to run the IDL client with all the correct licenses. Issue the following command:

If you have module purge in your .cshrc or .profile. Please load the idl module. The tool/idl modules are only present on the vis nodes so if you do (module load tool/idl-6.4) in your .cshrc you will get an error about a not found module unless you put in some logic to check and make sure you are on a vis node before attempting to load the module.

  $ xsub -I -W group_list= <Your own computational_group, e.g g1111> -q visual

OUTPUT

  Establishing X forwarding and submitting batch job...
  The authenticity of host 'discover07 (10.1.50.7)' can't be
  established.
  RSA key fingerprint is
  05:85:dd:d2:f7:b8:b7:38:14:f1:92:7f:24:9d:05:4c.
  Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
  qsub: waiting for job 768102.borgmg to start
  qsub: job 768102.borgmg ready

  Thu Jul 24 10:33:32 EDT 2008
  $

Note that if asked to verify the authenticity of the login host, type .yes.. Once a prompt is returned, verify that you are on the visor** node by the following:

  $ hostname
  visor**
  $

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3. What do I do if I get the following error? "It doesn't look like your $DISPLAY is set appropriately. Please contact User Support for assistance.."

You did not ssh into Discover with the -X option. Log out or exit, and issue the ssh command with the -X option as described above.

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4. What do I do if I get the following error? "It doesn't look like your ssh keys are setup properly. Please contact User Support for assistance.."

Users must set up password-less ssh keys in order to use PBS and allow the X11 forwarding to be set up without having to enter a password. If a user receives this error, follow these steps (Click here for more information):

  $ cd .ssh
  $ ssh-keygen -t dsa
  $ cp id_dsa.pub authorized_keys

Once this is done, re-issue the xsub command from above.

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5. Launch IDL

  $ module avail tool/idl

  $ module load tool/idl-6.4(or the version you need)

Run the following command to launch a IDL session:

  $ idl

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