Getting Started
Getting an Account
Use of Chimera is limited to those projects targeting the research and educational goals described in the NSF Award and summarized in the [Background] section of this Wiki.
If you are one of the Chimera faculty investigators and have not yet established your account, fill out the ECE/CIS new account form. Select a "research" account. Enter "Chimera Investigator" in the "Description of Usage" box. For "expected date of graduation" enter some date far in the future. For "Faculty/Instructor Contact", select "Stephen Siegel".
All other users must be sponsored by one of the faculty investigators. After an investigator has agreed to sponsor you, the next move depends on whether you already have an ECE/CIS account (also known as an "EE/CIS" account). Note this is not the same as a UD account. The only way you would have an ECE/CIS account is if you requested one at some time in the past.
- If you already have an ECE/CIS account, ask your sponsor to submit a ticket using the ECE/CIS Help Request System requesting that you be added to the sponsor's group. This request must come from the sponsor.
- If you do not already have an ECE/CIS account, you need to get one. Fill out the ECE/CIS new account form. Request a research account and indicate that you are a Chimera user in the "Description of Usage" box. For Faculty/Instructor Contact, select your sponsor. The "expected date of graduation" should be the date after which you will no longer need access to your ECE/CIS account (including Chimera). Your sponsor will receive an email directing him/her to https://www.eecis.udel.edu/NewAccount/Confirm.html to approve or deny the request.
After the request is approved, the account will be queued for creation. The account will not necessarily be created immediately, but it will be relatively soon.
Each user has their own individual home directory (by default, 100GB), which will be created the first time the user logs on. In addition, each group (led by one faculty investigator) has a larger shared directory (by default, 1TB) in the storage system.
Be sure to join the chimera-announce list. Please fill in your first and last names when filling out the form. This low-traffic list is used by the administrators of Chimera to broadcast important messages about the status of the machine, scheduled maintenance and shut-downs, and so on.
You should also consider joining the chimera-users list. This list is open to all users for discussion about anything related to Chimera: questions and answers, sharing of tips and tricks, and so on.
Setting up your Environment
The environmental setup should now be done automatically when the account is created, so you should not have to do anything. However, you can read the following to check that everything is set up properly...
Once you have an account, you log on to Chimera using ssh to chimera.cis.udel.edu.
Chimera uses the modules package to manage environments, paths, and so on. To initialize modules, you must make sure a certain script is executed each time you log in. This is most easily done by adding a line to the appropriate login file. The exact instructions depend on which shell you use.
If you use the bash shell, add the following line to your .profile file in your home directory:
source /usr/local/modules/etc/profile.modules
If you use the csh or tcsh shell, add the following to your .login file:
source /usr/local/modules/etc/csh.modules
You should log out and log back in, or just source the file above, before proceeding.