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ITNews

The newsletter of the SIE de Investigación y Enseñanza and the Servicios Informáticos N. 4 - January 2023

Welcome to computing services for new users

New users automatically find in their mail inbox a document called "Welcome to computing services" where a quick introduction to the IT services provided by SI and SIE is given, together with the relevant links for the details. The document was originally in HTML format, and after any changes the modified document had to be sent to the SI for its inclusion in the new users Inbox.

To make editing the document simpler and faster, and at the same time make it available to any IAC users, it has been converted to a Wiki page, and new users will find a link to such webpage. Not-so-new users too may find the information there provided useful for them, so we invite them to have a look at it. For any comments or suggestions, please write to sinfin [at] iac.es.

Wiki for research projects

Speaking of Wikis, for already 15 years in the SIE we have been using a Wiki, specifically the PmWiki implementation, to organize our internal documentation, write agendas and minutes of our meetings, provide instructions for installation of software packages, and other miscellaneous tasks. Other research projects have created their own group in the Wiki, for instance to organize Journal clubs, or as a shared logbook where to keep track of the work carried out.

gcc, Intel OneApi and NVIDIA HPC compilers in LaPalma

We have been working on updating the software installed on the supercomputer LaPalma. So far, several compilers have been updated: gcc with version 12.2.0 and Intel with version 2022.3 (oneAPI). At the same time, the MKL (2022.2.0) and IMPI (2021.7.0) libraries associated with the oneAPI toolkit have been updated. In addition, the Nvidia compilers for HPC version 22.7 have be en installed. Also, some libraries are being recompiled with the updated compilers to take advantage of the new features. To check what software packages and tools are available at LaPalma, please use the module command (for instance, module avail to get the complete list).

Internal web server migration

Venus, our internal web server, has become quite obsolete (it was set up in 2016), and is being replaced by a new one, with updated software packages like Apache or PHP, in order to increase the security of our applications and protect them from external attacks. Thus, in the last two months we have been moving most of the applications to the new server, currently named vesta.ll.iac.es. This process has been mostly transparent to the user, since the old links to venus automatically redirect to the new ones in vesta. There have been some (fortunately) minor problems, most of which could be solved quickly, while a couple of them require some more work.

There are still a couple of applications that, due to their complexity and time sensitivity, could not be relocated to the new server, and will be dealt with sometime early this year. Once the migration of venus to vesta is over, will be start working with the migration of our external server vivaldi (which hosts research.iac.es), a more daunting task in view of the many websites and applications currently installed in it.

SIE de Investigación y Enseñanza :: N. 4 - January 2023 - Contact: