New VT ARC Sun Accounts

Two Sun Systems running Solaris 10 are available as components of VT-ARC:

     styx.arc.vt.edu
     dante.arc.vt.edu

An ssh-2 or later client running on your local system is required to logon to these systems. MAC OS-X, Linux, and most other UNIX systems have a built in ssh client - simply enter the following commands to log onto styx or dante:

     ssh  styx.arc.vt.edu
                or
     ssh  dante.arc.vt.edu

1. The VT ARC systems require use of an ssh-2 or later client; in some Unix implementations, you will be required to use "ssh2" instead of "ssh" above.
   
   
2. If the id you are using on your local system is different from your id on the VT ARC systems, precede the VT ARC hostname with your VT ARC account name followed by the @ sign. For example, if your account name were my_acct, you could log onto inferno2 using the following command:

      ssh  my_acct@inferno2.arc.vt.edu
   

3. If you are logging on from a wireless or off campus location, you should do so using a VPN connection, see: http://www.computing.vt.edu/internet_and_web/internet_access/vpn.html
   
   
4. If you are using an MS Windows (2000, XP, 2003, or Vista) Desktop, you can download the latest "SSHSecureShell" Client (currently SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9.exe) from http://ftp.ssh.com/pub/ssh/ or the putty ssh client from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

Note:  Dante is a shared resource with four processors; Styx contains 8 processors. If you wish to run multiple long running jobs on Dante, use the "uptime" command to periodically monitor the load average statistics. When the load average exceeds 2.0 Dante or 4.0 on Styx, please limit the number of your long running jobs.

Use the "shared" sub-directory within your home directory for files you would like to share between the Styx and Dante systems.

Note:  While you are in the 'shared' sub-directory, you should reference your home directory by its full path. Since the 'shared' sub-directory within your home directory is linked from another partition ('/shared/your_userid'), you will not be able to use relative references of the form ".." to change out of this directories back to your home directory or to copy files from this directory back to your home directory. Instead, refer to your home directory as '~your_userid' or by its full path. Remembering this is particularly important when writing scripts to automate command processing. For example, if you are in your 'shared' directory and would like to copy a file to your 'work' sub-directory, enter:

      cp filename ~your_userid/work

Documentation

      http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/sun/index.php

For general information about software applications available at VT, see:

      http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/software/index.php

A brief introduction to MATLAB is available as:

      http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/software/MATLAB.php

      http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/helpdesk.html

On-line documentation for SAS can be accessed from:

      http://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/sas9doc.html

      http://www.sas.cc.vt.edu/sas.html

On-line documentation for the R Statitistical Package is available as:

      Introduction:  http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.html
      Manuals:       http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html

A brief introduction for use of R is available as:

      http://www.arc.vt.edu/arc/sun/sun-software.php#r

If you have questions, comments, or concerns, please let us know at arc@vt.edu.

Thank you.