Detailed HTCondor usage statistics
At last, it seems that the HTCondor problems experienced after the migration to
Fedora19 (mentioned in our last newsletter) have been solved. Since HTCondor standard
mouse/keyboard detection module was not compatible with our current OS version,
we adapted and installed an external module to make HTCondor immediately suspend
any running job as soon as it detects keyboard/mouse activity. To make sure that
HTCondor is not interfering with user's normal activity, and to allow users to
see how big a share HTCondor is taking of their desktop PC computing time, we have
been gathering more detailed information about jobs executions since a month
ago. In the last few weeks we have developed from scratch an online system to
present such data in a user's friendly format. You can check daily, weekly and
monthly statistics by going to (only internal network): http://carlota:81/condor_stats/index.php.
Please, do not hesitate to contact us if you have any related questions or issues
(also check this FAQ if you think you are still having problems related to HTCondor:
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/siepedia/pmwiki.php?n=HOWTOs.CondorFAQs#detection).
As for current HTCondor usage, it's keeping up its good pace: in March and
April it has executed over 40% more hours than during the January-February
period. Right now, HTCondor has executed over 860,000 hours in 2014 (almost one
hundred years - not of solitude), more than the whole 2013 (728,172 hours -
83.1 years), and we expect to pass the 1,000,000 hours mark in just a few more
weeks. As usual, if your research work greatly depends on computational results,
we encourage you to visit our page about Supercomputing at IAC
(
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/Main/supercomputing.php),
and visit us so we can advise you on how to get your results in much less time.
New data published in the IAC Virtual Observatory
Since we started publishing IAC80 archival images on the Virtual Observatory
(VO) last year, we have been adding regularly new images as soon as the
one-year proprietary period ends. This week we just published images from
late 2012 to April 2013. The IAC80-VO archive contains now around 90000
images, all of them reduced with the standard CAMELOT pipeline and
appropriately astrometrized. The easiest way to retrieve such images is using
Aladin's All-VO tool, filtering sources by IAC. We are currently working
together with the Support Astronomers Group (GAS) to build a similar archive
for the CAIN camera at the Carlos Sánchez Telescope.
Three weeks ago we attended a Virtual Observatory Workshop in Madrid, where,
besides learning about similar projects in other Spanish observatories (and
presenting the IAC' VO), we practiced with new tools for VO data publishing,
developed by the Spanish Virtual Observatory (SVO). These tools will help us
publish new data provided by IAC researchers. If you have (reduced) images,
spectra or catalogues that you think are useful for the whole astronomical
community, do get in touch with us to know how to publish them in the VO.
New scripts to install astronomical software in laptops
Although it took longer than initially planned and anticipated in our SIENews
issue n. 48, we finally have completed the migration to the new system of
scripts to install astronomical software in a (Linux) laptop. Now, one has
simply to download the script from
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/siepedia/pmwiki.php?n=HOWTOs.AstronomicalSoftwareLaptop
(a webpage accessible from anywhere an internet connection is available), and
just run it, by logging in as root or using sudo). The same webpage contains
some general instructions, while installation and usage notes specific to
each packages are printed upon completion of the installation, or are
included in the associated README file. We encourage you to try these new
scripts, and will be happy to receive any comments, bug reports or
suggestions for improvement about them.
Software updates
A few software packages have been updated in the last two months. Most
notable is the upgrade to IRAF v.2.16.1, which is primarily a bug-fix
release. However, there may be small but important differences with respect
to the previous version. For instance, as a user just discovered, you can't
leave the parameter ccdred.instrument set to NULL (that is, an empty string),
otherwise you'll get an error message when running ccdproc. If you don't need
or don't have an instrument file, just set ccdred.instrument=" " (with the
blank). Other important updates are those to both the Intel Fortran and C/C++
compiler (to v14.0.2) and the PGI compilers suite (to v14.3). Also, we
updated the Astromatic packages to their latest releases. For a complete list
of updates, see
https://research.iac.es/sieinvens/SINFIN/Main/sie_activities.php,
or follow the announcements on Twitter (
https://twitter.com/SIEie_IAC). We
would also like to remind that usually, after a package update, we keep the
previous version around for a while should problems or backward
incompatibilities emerge. Then, older releases are deleted to make room for
new installations or upgrades.