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Tony Cass and Michael Dodgson CN/DCI
A new Public Login Unix Service, HPPLUS, is now available for use by anyone at CERN. This service has been in development over the summer and, with the recent arrival of new hardware and the introduction of the latest release of the HEPiX scripts, the service will be opened for general use on November 20th.
The HPPLUS service is based around seven HP 735/125 workstations, each equipped with 208MB of memory and 2GB of disk space. Just like other CUTE systems described in the article ``Work Group Servers and Public Login Servers'' above, the HPPLUS service relies on AFS for user home directory files and for access to programs from ASIS or Group Directories. This means that files you create on the HPPLUS can be read by users of these other services. Equally, HPPLUS users have full access to the Public and Private staging areas and to CSF batch facilities; where relevant, users will also have access to their experiment's AFS-based SHIFT facilities. This means your batch programs can access program and data files you create on the HPPLUS and that you can read ntuples created in batch jobs from HPPLUS.
As an interactive service, HPPLUS has full access to all of the programs from ASIS and can be used for all of your general interactive activities---such as reading and sending mail, news reading or text processing---and for program development work. The hepf77 command provides a convenient interface to the Fortran compiler, just as on the CERNSP service. This command takes a few simple options and will select the appropriate optimisation switches on any architecture. The VM migration utilities are available on HPPLUS just as for CERNSP. In short, HPPLUS is a full member of the CUTE family of services and is a natural home for anybody who would like access to an HP environment. In particular, if you use the CSF facility but don't have access to an HP-based Work Group Server then the HPPLUS service could be appropriate for you.
To access the HPPLUS service you can use telnet hpplus, rlogin hpplus or similar commands. There is no need to ask for a connection to an individual machine, you will be routed automatically to the node with the lightest load at the time. If you have an X terminal you can start a new XDM login session to HPPLUS directly. With the recent introduction of the HEPiX X11 scripts you will be provided with a fully supported graphical environment. This consists of the fvwm window manager with a menu specially adapted for use at CERN and with one or two basic clients---such as an xterm. It is easy to tailor this environment to suit your own wishes or to provide a specially customised group environment (see the articles on the X11 environment elsehwere in this CNL).
When you log-in via XDM you will automatically be logged in to the Zephyr messaging service and subscribed to a special HPPLUS class which will be used to send urgent messages about the service. If you are interested in receiving these messages even when you are logged into some other system then you should subscribe to the HPPLUS Zephyr class with the command zctl subscribe hpplus * *.
We have enabled all groups to register accounts on HPPLUS. A group administrator who can register accounts on CERNVM or CERNSP can now also register accounts on HPPLUS. On entering USERREG they should first select the CUTE general service and then HPPLUS out of the second list presented. Groups without such an administrator should contact Attila Koppanyi, Attila.Koppanyi@cern.ch, stating who should be enabled to register on HPPLUS (this must come from a group computing contact or an existing administrator). Groups should also nominate an AFS Space Administrator as the HPPLUS users, like those on other CUTE services, have an AFS rather than a local home directory. Again, Attila Koppanyi should be contacted to register, or provide a guide for, the AFS Space Administrator. We are more than happy to see users registered for accounts on the HPPLUS service even if they have accounts on other, non-HP CUTE services---either CERNSP or a Work Group Server. The HPPLUS service is designed to provide an HP interactive environment to anybody who needs this, even if they sometimes use other systems.
A User Guide for the HPPLUS service is available from the User Consultancy Office in building 513 or in WWW under http://consult.cern.ch/writeups/hpplusug/.