1 Home Unlabelled NIH Biowulf cluster a GNU/Linux parallel processing system
16:09:00
A+ A-

NIH Biowulf cluster a GNU/Linux parallel processing system

Diagram of Biowulf's network

Biowulf at the NIH

The NIH Biowulf cluster is a GNU/Linux parallel processing system designed and built at the National Institutes of Health and managed by the Helix Systems Staff. The system is designed for large numbers of simultaneous jobs common in bioinformatics as well as large-scale distributed memory tasks such as molecular dynamics.


Citing Biowulf and Scientific Publications
top
The continued growth and support of NIH's Biowulf cluster is dependent upon its demonstrable value to the intramural program. In the past we have been successful in obtaining support by citing published work which involved the use of our systems.
  • When publishing data resulting from calculations done on the NIH Biowulf cluster, please use the following citation in the article:
    This study utilized the high-performance computational capabilities of the Biowulf Linux cluster at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. (http://biowulf.nih.gov).
  • Please report the publication of articles which made use of the cluster to the Helix Systems Staff by citing the reference in email to [email protected].
Accounts
top
Biowulf accounts require a pre-existing Helix account. A Biowulf account can be obtained by registering on the webhere. Biowulf accounts not accessed within a 60 day period are automatically locked as a security precaution. A user may request to have his account unlocked by sending email to [email protected].
Logging in
top
The Biowulf system is accessed from the NIH network via ssh to biowulf.nih.gov. We recommend the PuTTYSSH client for Windows users as it is free, feature-rich, and widely used. Mac and Unix/Linux users can use the ssh client available from the command line in a terminal window.
Xwindows connection software is also recommended for GUI/visualization applications that are run on the login or computational nodes (e.g. x-povray or interactive SAS) display on your desktop workstation. We provide freeXwindows software for Macs and PCs to Helix Systems users.
Password Information
Users log in to Helix and Biowulf using their NIH domain username and password.
Shells
The Bourne-Again SHell (bash) is the default shell on most Linux systems including Biowulf. Other available shells, including csh and tcsh, are listed in /etc/shells. To change your default shell, use the command:
chsh -s shell_name
where shell_name is the full pathname of the desired shell (e.g., /bin/csh).
Home directories
Biowulf home directories are in a shared NFS (Network File System) filespace, therefore the access to files in your home directory is identical from any node in Biowulf. Note that your Biowulf home directory is the same directory as your Helix home directory.