Working on the servers of the ESCER Centre
Operating system
The operating system on our servers is Linux. If you are not familiar with Linux/UNIX have a look a the basic commands: Basic Linux/UNIX commands
Internal servers
We call them "internal" because they are inside our firewall.
If you are part of the ESCER Centre you will most likely be working on one of our "internal servers". Check out our server pool under: Serveurs de recherche
External servers
The so called "external" servers are outside our firewall and are only used to connect to our internal servers when connecting from outside the firewall.
Outside/inside our firewall
You are inside our firewall when:
- connected via cable on the internet on the 6st or 7th floor of the PK
- using UQAM's VPN
Otherwise you are outside our firewall.
Connection to internal servers
When using a workstation or laptop in an office on the 6st or 7th floor in the PK, which is connected to the internet via cable, you can connect to our internal servers directly. Otherwise you will have to connect via a VPN or via one of our external servers hoppy1/hoppy2/hoppy3.
To learn more about how to connect to our servers check out the following wiki page: Plus d'informations
To change your password, follow the instructions on our wiki page: Change password
Your home
On all of our internal servers you have the same home called: /HOME/username
For your home you have a quota of 500 MByte.
Everything under the home directories is backed up. You can find more information about our backup policies and how to retrieve the backups on the following wiki: Home backup
Since the homes are backed up it is highly recommended to keep everything that is small and important in your home, like all your scripts and programs! You can work with symbolic links if you like to have your scripts and programs accessible from other directories or on other file systems.
Your data
To store your data you have disk space available on a filesystem on one of our internal servers. You find the names in the email you got about your account creation.
If ever you need to transfer data from/to one of the internal servers to/from the outside, follow the instructions on the following page: Transfert de données de/vers l'extérieur
The software
On our UQAM servers, as well as on clusters of The Alliance, 'modules' are used to give access to different software packages. Learn more about modules on the following page: Modules
Python
Even though there are default Python version installed on some of the servers it is strongly recommended to load a version via the modules (see above): Accéder à Python
Jupyter
If you want to use Jupyter follow the instruction on the following site: Accéder à Jupyter
RPN Python
To be able to read/write RPN files in Python, follow the instruction on the following site: RPN Python
CRCM/GEM
At the ESCER Centre we a using a slightly modified version of ECCC's (Environnement Canada et Climat Canada) weather forecast model GEM (Global Environmental Multiscale), officially called "Developmental version of CRCM/GEM".
For more information click o the following link: CRCM/GEM
GEM model output
Instead of being in NetCDF or GRIB format, the GEM model in- and output is the RPN standard format. This format comes with it's own set of tools to look at and to modify the data.
On the internal servers of the ESCER Centre you can find some practice data under:
~data/Example_data
You can find some general information about our GEM model output here: GEM model output
Full description of the tools below and other tools can also be found on the following page: RPN standard files
Having a first glance at the GEM model output
vl3 / vl4 / vl5 → list variable names and descriptions
To list the names (and if lucky units) of the variables inside a file try the command:
And there are some more variable lists here: Variable dictionaries
voir → list content (names / date/time / level)
To have a closer look at the fields and see date/time, levels, etc. try 'voir':
For more information about 'voir' check here: voir - documentation
xrec → visualize fields
To visualize the fields you can use 'xrec':
But you need to have connected with 'ssh -YC ...' to open windows.
For more information about 'xrec' check here as well: xrec - documentation
Manipulate RPN files
To extract fields you can use either 'r.diag select ...' or 'editfst'. You can find information about both here: Manipulating RPN files
But both these tools can be a little tricky to use. So don't hesitate to contact me when you get there!
Convert RPN to NetCDF
In general it would be better to keep GEM output in RPN format to avoid "doubling" the output data. However, in some cases it can be useful to convert files in RPN format to NetCDF format or vice versa.
The tool with which one can do this is called cdf2rpn. You can find information about cdf2rpn under the following link: cdf2rpn - documentation
Running GEM
CRCM/GEM is installed on certain clusters of The Digital Research Alliance of Canada.
To learn how to run CRCM/GEM have a look at the wiki pages under: Running CRCM/GEM
Courses
SciNet, the High Performance Computing Consortium at the University of Toronto, is offering a large variety of SciNet online courses.