• Discovery Cluster
• Printers
• Printing a Poster
• S Drive
• Google Drive
• Swing
• Virtual Private Network

The Discovery Cluster is a cluster of >300 machines and >20K CPUs managed by the NEU Information Technology Services. The cluster is physically located at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), a state-of-the art computing facility in Holyoke, MA. The cluster is available to the broader Northeastern community; beyond common hardware, several SPIRAL faculty maintain dedicated hardware at the cluster.

Information on the Discovery Cluster is maintained in a separate SPIRAL wiki.

• IMPORTANT: Please make sure you are not printing in color while using this printer, unless required.

1. Email [email protected], if possible, 48 hours in advance. They will create a ticket for you.
2. Once the poster is ready, you will receive an email and will be asked to pick it up from 009 Hayden Hall (basement floor).
3. Your poster will be placed outside the door of 009 Hayden Hall.

S Drive is a shared storage space for SPIRAL. To get access, send email to [email protected] (cc your advisor), and ask for access to SPIRAL server.

If you are connecting from outside the campus, use the NEU-VPN service. Then use your COE credentials and one of the following cases:

My Computer > Tools > Map Network Drive. Server: \\shares.coe.neu.edu\spiral . Authenticate with your COE/ECE username and password. {Strongly Suggested: Map as S drive.} In the login credential entry window, for username use WINCOE\<your_coe_username> so that the domain is set properly for your remote connection attempt. For CLI gurus: net use s: \\shares.coe.neu.edu\spiral /u:WINCOE\<your_coe_username> <your_coe_password>

• The specified network password is not correct: If you can login to the COE/ECE webmail service using the same password that means your password expired for network drive mapping. Change your password from here and remap S drive with using the new password.

# Install the prerequisite
sudo apt install cifs-utils keyutils

# Create the mounting point
mkdir -p <your_mounting_point>

# Mount
sudo mount -t cifs -o username=<user> //shares.coe.neu.edu/spiral <your_mounting_point>

# List
ls <your_mounting_point>

# Unmount
sudo umount <your_mounting_point>

• mount error(2): No such file or directory: Use option nodfs. Installing package keyutils may also help resolving the issue.

• If you could not mount try following

$ sudo vim /etc/samba/smb.conf

and then it should look like this:

[global]
client min protocol = SMB2
client max protocol = SMB2

If one of them is not smb2 (i.e. smb3) change it to smb2. This should resolve the issue!

• Remote login to bspiral.coe.neu.edu with your COE/ECE credentials. The disk space is mounted on /bspiral. You can log in to spiral via SSH on port 27, and use SFTP to transfer files (sftp -oPort=27 [email protected]). If you are root on your own Linux desktop, you can use "smbmount" to mount the bspiral share via Samba. Support for smbfs must be compiled into your kernel for smbmount to work.

Go to Finder>Go>”Connect to Server” and enter Server Address “smb://shares.coe.neu.edu/spiral” and click “+”. Click on Connect. In the next pop-up window enter your coe username and password credentials to connect.

Creating a private folder in the B drive: You need an SSH client to do this. 0) Install the SSH client using ssh3.exe found in B:\CSL_Resources\Software\WinApps

1. Connect to "gateway.coe.neu.edu" using your COE account (with the command terminal)
2. Type in "ssh -p 27 bspiral" - you are now connected to bspiral.coe.neu.edu which hosts B
3. Type in "cd /bspiral" - you are now in the root B folder
4. Type in "pwd" to see current path or "ls -al" to see directory listing Then, to make your USER folder personal with private access:
5. Type cd "Users"
6. Type in "ls -al" to see existing directories with permissions The blue text on the right end of each line is the directory name.
7. Type in "chmod -R 700 FolderName (where FolderName = Your LastName and you create this folder yourself) d = directory 7=111 for RWX access to owner 0=000 for RWX access to bspiral 0=000 for RWX access to world Example: “chmod -R 700 erdogmus” yields Permission Owner Group FolderName drwx--S--- 4 erdogmus bspiral blahblah BLUE{erdogmus} which is a personal directory with Read-Write-eXecute access given to user/owner erdogmus (owner) and nobody else. This process requires that you create the folder yourself so that you are the owner and can change its settings. You can create the folder via SSH or via your OS. Do not make your USER folder hidden from others (e.g., in Linux). Do not manipulate shared folders using Linux OS (Windows users face problems).

Add the SPIRAL shared Google Drive folder to your Google Drive.

Swing is a number crunching machine managed by Bspiral (managed by Jaume). Send an email to [email protected] and ask for access to Swing. To access it you will need an account and a ssh client program in your computer.

• Account: In order to create an account send an email to [email protected] and provide your desired username. The admin will create an account for you and set up a temporary password. Users should change their password from the terminal with the command "passwd". Passwords should have at least 7 characters and have both letters (upper and lower case) and numbers.
• SSH Client: You can access swing with your favorite ssh client at swing.ece.neu.edu.

Swing access is not restrained to fixed execution scheduling. This gives users freedom to access the server at will, but it can create situations in which the server is overloaded. For this reason, there are some rules that the users should follow:

• When executing long term programs, log off your external session from the server. Use the command "screen" to execute programs in detached mode.
• Close all processes when they are finished. The command "top -u username" tells which are the processes being run and their load on the system.
• Swing is a computing server, not storage! HD space is small and sometimes there are issues with free space. Delete all files you do not need anymore.
• Use the smallest sufficient number of cores for your work. Swing has multiple cores that can run in parallel but when there are many users accessing them everything slows down.
• Make sure your program does not use too much RAM.
• If you want to run a program that really needs a lot of resources, ask the admin for a time slot when this process does not disrupt other people's work.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides Northeastern students, faculty, staff with end-to-end secure remote access between a computer or device in a remote location and certain on-campus resources. This includes, e.g., accessing the S Drive, accessing GUIs on compute nodes on the Discovery cluster, or sshing to COE servers from overseas. Instructions on how to set up a VPN connection can be found here.

All users of the VPN are required to authenticate their accounts with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Here are the instructions on how to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (see here for more details):

1. Click here
2. Log in to your Northeastern account with your University credentials
3. Select “Enable” on the registration page
4. Select the “Start Setup” button
5. Choose your device type (mobile phones are recommended)
6. Enter your phone number OR download the app to your device
7. Select your phone type (e.g. iPhone, Android, Windows, etc.)
8. Install Duo Mobile from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store
9. Open the Duo app & Scan the barcode listed