The [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4196 ] Research Computing servers allow connectivity via the secure shell protocol for command-line access. This documentation describes the steps required to run applications supported by the Research Computing group on the Research Computing servers.

To open up a 'terminal' session to a Research Computing server from a computer running the Windows operating system, you must use a 'secure shell' (ssh) client. Secure shell can be downloaded and installed onto your Windows system if it is not already there. The ssh client [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4703 ] SSH Secure Shell and [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4182 ] SecureCRT are recommended for use. They are available free of charge for faculty, staff, and students at the University of North Carolina. There are also numerous ssh software programs freely available for windows. If you are not affiliated with the University of North Carolina, [ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ ] PuTTY is a free ssh client you may wish to consider.

If you want to run X applications (i.e., graphical Unix applications such as Matlab, SAS, Maple) on a Research Computing server from a local computer, and have the graphics display on your local computer. You need to run the X-windows server software on your local computer. Standard X-windows server software that runs on MS Windows systems includes [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4696 ] X-Win32 which is available free of charge for faculty, staff, and students at the University of North Carolina.

You need to have an account before you can login using Secure Shell (ssh) to connect to Research Computing servers. You can request account to these servers by visiting the [ https://onyen.unc.edu/ ] Onyen Services page and selecting Subscribe to Services .

Once you have an account, start up your ssh client, use the instructions on the [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4703 ] SSH Secure Shell or [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4182 ] SecureCRT help page to create a connection to the [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4196 ] Research Computing servers of your choice (for example, Emerald, emerald.unc.edu ) that uses the SSH2 protocol and includes checking the option to Forward X11 packets or Tunnel X11 connections .

Click on this connection and this will contact the ssh server on the remote host and will attempt to log you in after prompting you for your Onyen and password.

If you intend to submit interactive jobs which display graphic results i.e. open up a window that sort of looks like the software is running locally on your own computer such that you can click around in it, you need to have a X-windows server software and enable X11 tunneling in your ssh client.

In general, you can run the research applications on the Research Computing server in the following ways, depending on exactly what you want to do.

Interactive modes allow you to type commands directly into the application; non-interactive modes require you to put statements in a program file or scripts and then submit this file for background processing.

When you use one of these modes, each of these modes operates via a batch manager software called LSF (Load Sharing Facility) to allocate resources fairly to all running jobs. LSF is described in more detail in [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=4484 ] here.

The procedures of run a specific mathematical and statistical application in three modes are described in detail below, please click the following link to proceed:

[ http://its.unc.edu/research-computing.html ] Research Computing home page