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Aristotle§

Overview§

Aristotle is an interactive, Linux-based compute service for teaching, running on four nodes, each with 128 gigabytes of RAM and 16 cores. The nodes run the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system (RHEL 7) and have a subset of the RCPS software stack available.

The main aim of this service is to allow specific teaching courses to run that need to run Linux/UNIX applications, but it is available to all UCL users.

Warning

Aristotle is made available but is provided with minimal staff time and no budget. Any user may completely occupy the service and there is no system in place to prevent that.

Access§

Anyone with a UCL userid and within the UCL institutional firewall can access Aristotle by connecting via ssh to:

aristotle.rc.ucl.ac.uk

This address can point to more than one actual server (via DNS round-robin). To connect to a specific server from the set, you will need to know its number: for example, the second server has the address aristotle02.rc.ucl.ac.uk. When you connect, you should be shown which one you are connected to on your command line.

The userid and password you need to connect with are those provided to you by Information Services Division.

If you experience difficulties with your login, please make sure that you are typing your UCL user ID and your password correctly. If you still cannot get access, please contact us at rc-support@ucl.ac.uk.

If you are outside the UCL firewall, you will need to connect to the Gateway system first and then SSH in to Aristotle from there.

User Environment§

Aristotle runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and NFS mounts the RCPS Software Stack. As this machine is intended for teaching, work has focused on getting specific applications required for specific courses to work and these are:

  • SAC
  • Phon
  • GMT
  • Fortran compilers (of which there are a large variety)

Packages are available through modules and users should consult the relevant modules documentation.