New touch-based information panel in main corridor
Chances are you have already noticed the new Research Area's touch monitor on
the IAC's main corridor. It displays the pictures of all Research and
Graduate Studies Division staff members, as well as the latest research news,
submitted preprints, and upcoming talks. In addition, you can find
astronomical pictures and some presentations for outreach purposes.
The software behind the panel, which runs on a modest Raspberry Pi
microcomputer, was fully developed by us using touch-based web technologies.
It gathers information from the IAC's SAP system, the IAC Preprints and
Publications archives, and from the IACTalks database.
Plans for the future includes adding data for all the IAC personnel, and the
possibility of uploading PDF presentations which can then be used for guided
visits.
We'd like to remark that the panel is still in beta phase, and that we are
open to comments and suggestions.
SIE's training program
In the last few weeks we have given two workshops and a seminar (the last
jointly with SIC).
The first 4-day workshop, titled "Python for Astronomy", and given by our own
Jorge Pérez Prieto, was addressed to support astronomers, telescope
technicians and IACTEC staff. It was followed a few weeks later by another
worskhop with the same title, this time open to all IAC researchers, with
about 30 participants.
The
survey
we made after the workshops shows high satisfaction ratings, with about
half of the participants expressing interest in advanced topics.
A few days ago the seminar "Supercomputing at IAC" was given by Antonio
Dorta (SIE) and Ubay Dorta (SIC), in which all Supercomputing resources
available to IAC's researchers were presented: features, main usage, policy
of use, etc., with special focus on the new machines: the new "Burros" added
last September, the Severo Ochoa Supercomputer last November and the
LaPalma3 Supercomputer a few weeks ago.
Our supercomputing facilities are of interest not only to our researchers,
but also to anyone working at IAC (engineers, technical staff, etc.), who
might take advantage of the them. The webcast is available at
IACtalks,
and the
slides are also available.
General information about Supercomputing at IAC is available at the
SIE Supercomputing webpage
We are now preparing a new edition of our "Dale alas a tus programas" (give
wings to your programs) workshop series, scheduled for late April. Besides
teaching how to use HTCondor, as in past workshops, it will also tackle such new
topics as submitting jobs with SLURM (the cluster management and job
scheduling installed in the Severo Ochoa server, LaPalma3 and TeideHPC), and
basic code parallelization techniques.
If you are interested in any other supercomputing topics, or in some
programming languages or astronomical software packages, and would like them
to be included in future seminars or workshops, please do let us know.
Supercomputing Statistics for 2017
HTCondor has experienced a noticeable increase in the number
of CPU hours in 2017, when it consumed 1,766,302 hours, 16% more than in the
previous year.
As for
TeideHPC, the interruption of executions for more
than one month, due to high load and the additional restrictions that were
imposed, clearly affected our usage, so that the total time of 3,138,633
hours was about 5% lower than in 2016, consuming only 69% of the total time
available on TeideHPC (we usually range between 70% and 80%).
For the
LaPalma Supercomputer we only have statistics data
for the first semester, where a total of 363,337 hours were used: as you
know, it was shut down and disassembled in the second semester to make room
for the new version of the Supercomputer, LaPalma3, which has now been
running for a few weeks.
Finally, we welcome a new machine, the
Severo Ochoa
Supercomputer, which has executed 21,137 hours since it was switched
on in late November 2017.
Adding up all these numbers, the total amount of CPU hours used by IAC
researchers in 2017 was 5,289,409 hours.
New/updated software on burros (Fedora 26)
All of our high performance PCs (aka "burros") run on Fedora 26. We
have installed new tools as well as updated existing software packages:
- PGI C++ and Fortran compilers:
updated to version 18.1, which
fixes some incompatibilities between older versions and Fedora 26.
- Intel
compilers: updated to version 2018-update1 (this release is
incompatible with older Fedora releases).
- ESO pipelines:
several of them have been installed in denso: efosc, fors, giraf,
kmos, muse, sinfo, uves, vimos, visir, xshoo. Should you need a pipeline not
included in this list, please let us know.
- ALFA:
Automated Line Fitting Algorithm, especially useful for big datacubes.
- ndcube:
"SunPy-affiliated package designed for handling n-dimensional datacubes
described by a WCS (World Coordinate System) translation" - only on Python3.
- IDL v8.7: See the
IDL 8.7
Release Notes to see new routines and features, fixed issues, etc.
If using IDL remotely on another computer, type idl87p
or idl85p if the "regular" IDL session hangs (which
is due to issues with the graphics drivers on remote connections - the
commands above are workarounds).
Local installation of Python packages
With the ever increasing number of IAC Python users, from time to time we
receive requests to install or update this or that Python module. We'll be
happy to do it for you: we'll install it in all Linux desktops so that
everybody can take advantage of the new/updated module. However, if you are
in a hurry, you can easily do it yourself, using
pip with the
--user
flag, which does not require being
root or using
sudo,
for instance:
pip install --upgrade --user matplotlib # (Python2)
pip3 install --upgrade --user matplotlib # (Python3)
This is the easiest and safest way. The module will be installed (on
Linux)into:
~/.local/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/
(where X.X is the Python version — this directory is automatically included
in the Python path), while any accompanying executables will go into
~/.local/bin/.
On a laptop, you can use the OS's package manager to install the packages you
need (for instance, on Fedora:
dnf install
python3-scipy python3-spyder ), or use the local installation method
described above for those packages not available in the OS repositories.
We strongly recommend against running
pip as
root or with
sudo, as this on one
side creates potential security problems, on the other it may interfere with
the system-installed python packages. See for instance the explanation given
in
https://askubuntu.com/questions/802544/is-sudo-pip-install-still-a-broken-practice
or the note in the
Astropy
installation page: "Do
not install Astropy or other
third-party packages using sudo unless you are fully aware of the risks."