Quick Start Guide

This information is for users who are adept at using an HPC system and are only interested in the basic Nightingale workflow.

Initial access: To access Nightingale, your project’s Principal Investigator (PI) should fill out the NCSA Extensible Resource Allocation System (XRAS) form. Someone from the Nightingale project will contact you via email within a few days of filling out this form. See Accessing the System for more details.

Log into Nightingale: You log into Nightingale using a Secure Shell (SSH) client on your local desktop or laptop. See Node Hostnames for the hostnames and step-by-step login instructions.

Queues: See Nightingale Queues for the current limits of the Nightingale queues.

Slurm: Nightingale uses Slurm for job management. See Managing Your Jobs with Slurm for information on how to submit batch jobs and interactive batch jobs; sample batch scripts are also available.

Transfer data into correct directory: You will not work directly on your group’s curated project data in the /datasets directory. Instructions on how to transfer data from /datasets to your home, scratch, or projects directory can be found in Transferring Files. If you ever need to transfer data off Nightingale, read and follow the protected data guidelines before transferring.