After more than 10 years, the helios server will be removed at the end of this academic year (2021-2022).
The HPC infrastructure can provide a full-fledged alternative to helios. The new web portal on https://login.hpc.ugent.be offers a very user-friendly entry point for researchers and students. This is described in chapter 8 of the manual at https://www.ugent.be/hpc/en/support/documentation.htm With the advent of new debug/visualization cluster 'slaking' we can also offer interactive desktops, without the drawbacks of a queue.
Alternatively, you can also use the VSC Tier-1 Cloud setup. This is a private cloud setup, similar to Amazon/Google, but on VSC infrastructure. This offers you more tailor-made possibilities, but requires that you (or someone else in your group) maintain these virtual machines, do user management etc. More information at https://www.vscentrum.be/cloud
Helios is the interactive unix / linux server, replacing allserv and genix/eduserv.
Helios is meant for students and for staff.
Helios is a virtual machine with 16G ram and 12 Intel Xeon 2.9Ghz CPUs.
The OS on helios is Ubuntu. A selection of software from the (extensive!) ubuntu repositories is installed on the system. The list of software packages on helios can be obtained using the dpkg command:
dpkg -l
apt-cache search <pattern> apt-cache show <package>
The disk space allocated on helios is independent of the standard disk space quota for students and staff.
Users have a home directory on the /users file system with a fixed quota of 5GB.
The /work file system is available to users as temporary workspace. Typical use of /work could be as follows (the variable LOGNAME contains the login name of the user):
mkdir -m 700 /work/$LOGNAME cd /work/$LOGNAME # do some work
The free space (~ 100GB currently) on the local disks assigned to the /work filesystem can be used at will. Note: if this file system reaches its limit, the system administrator can empty it without notice.
From Helios you can access personal disk space(H:-drive), shared disk space (shares), personal web space (users.ugent.be) and shared web space (webshares). See: Access to central disk space.
Every Monday between 5 and 6 p.m. there is a maintenance window in which software upgrades and other regular maintenance are performed. Occasionally a reboot may be necessary. Reboots are announced (half an hour to several hours) in advance in the "message of the day" which you see at login. Authenticated users get a message on their (virtual) terminal.
Larger maintenance tasks are announced via the ICT helpdesk and may take place outside the maintenance window.
When helios would be unavailable for a longer period, a smaller server will take over its functions. Users can then access their files and perform basic activities. Heavy load jobs won't be possible in such circumstances.