DAS-3 User Accounts

Login accounts on DAS-3

If you are a faculty member or student at the participating universities, you may request a login account on the DAS-3 system by sending mail to das-account@cs.vu.nl.

Passwords on DAS-3

The DAS-3 clusters do not form one seamless whole. In particular, the password administration is done per site: the master copy of the password files is at fs0.das3.cs.vu.nl, and users should only change their password there. The password files at the other sites will be regularly updated with the version at the master site.

File systems on DAS-3

The file systems at different sites are completely separate, so it will be necessary to transfer the files between the home directories manually (e.g., by means of scp), or by using Grid software that does this transparently for you.

Besides the home directories, the directory /var/scratch of the file server is also mounted on each DAS-3 node. You can use the subdirectory /var/scratch/<userid> for temporary bulk storage during or between jobs. In case you need space for temporary files on each node separately, you can use /var/tmp/<userid>. Please empty /var/scratch/<userid> and /var/tmp/<userid> when you no longer need the space.

Contacting the DAS-3 system administrators

Problem reports, e.g., missing software or documentation or apparent hardware failures, should be sent to das-sysadm@cs.vu.nl.

For account related support (e.g., if you ran out of diskquota or you forgot your password) please send mail to das-account@cs.vu.nl.

Access to DAS-3

Access to DAS-3 is possible by logging in to the DAS-3 fileserver at one of the participating sites using ssh (secure shell). Connections are accepted from hosts in the domain of the DAS-3 sites, so for access from the outside, first log in to another machine at your home site. In special cases, the ssh access lists of the DAS-3 head nodes can be extended with an additional IP address.


• The DAS-3 fileserver at the Vrije Universiteit is fs0.das3.cs.vu.nl and the compute nodes are named node0XY.das3.cs.vu.nl (01 <= XY <= 85).
• The nodes at Leiden University are named fs1.das3.liacs.nl and node1XY.das3.liacs.nl (01 <= XY <= 32).
• The nodes at the University of Amsterdam are named fs2.das3.science.uva.nl and node2XY.das3.science.uva.nl. (01 <= XY <= 40).
• The nodes at Delft University of Technology are named fs3.das3.tudelft.nl and node3XY.das3.tudelft.nl. (01 <= XY <= 68).
• The nodes at the University of Amsterdam for the MultimediaN project are named fs4.das3.science.uva.nl and node4XY.das3.science.uva.nl. (01 <= XY <= 46).

Users will typically login to one of the DAS-3 file servers, develop software there, and start the parallel applications on a subset of the compute nodes. To avoid people getting in each other's way on the compute nodes, every DAS-3 user is required to use the cluster startup and reservation commands described in this section.