News and Updates

Changes that occurred during our recent maintenance...

RES

• New AMI for WinOS that include
• Updates to already installed data science tools
• Addition of R v4.6.1 and updated R v4.5.3 (from 4.5.1); and SQLStudio and DatatGrip (from JetBrains, makers of PyCharm)
• A rich set of commonly-used R pkgs and Stat modules pre-installed for stats and data science work
• Updates licenses for SAS and Stata
• RTools 4.4 and 4.5, in order to build R pkgs from source
• Setting ReD's Posit Package Manager as the default for R pkg and Python module installations
• Fixed execution PATH problem so that python and conda commands work in Windows Shell and PowerShell
• Set Windows runtime configuration to enhance responsiveness for applications and GUI appearance for a better user experience
• Reduced the number of EC2 instance types shown in the pop-up menu for specifying compute size during the VDI provisioning step

PC/OOD - Updates to all scientific software containers - Addition of R v4.6.1 and updated R v4.5.3 (from 4.5.1)

Catching up on a number of changes that were release the past weeks:

• New AMI for RES/Linux with new Julia packages added
• New AMI for RES/Windows:
• Tika and other vulnerabilities removed
• ArcGIS added as a new software title
• Updated NotePad++ and LibreOffice
• Added two new labs: Ne'eman (PC/OOD) and Slopen (RES). Welcome! :waive:
• Updated template SLURM batch job script on SLURM and RStudio pages
• Updated docs to include Choosing Resources

• R_LIBS_USER and INLA R package problems posted in Known Issues / R Software page and FAQ
• Additional items/links added to OOD Help menu
• Explanatory item added for Lab folders in OOD Files menu
• OOD page include new sections for browsing files, viewing running jobs, and more details on the Interactive applications forms, including job defaults.
• OOD FAQ page updated
• Our Software FAQ page is now up.
• We've updated our example SLURM script to reflect better practices for project/file organization and script execution
• updated to container example SLURM script also

• fasse-small partition added for browsing files and low CPU/RAM activity (e.g. writing code)
• Open OnDemand v4 deployed with ParallelCluster service
• Ability to choose # of cores and RAM sizes added to OOD interactive application forms
• Users informed that defaults are set to one task and one node per job
• RES VDI instance sizes have been restricted to limit potential runaway costs
• Updated bind parameter in SLURM jobs examples using containers due to a change with the NSAPH FASSE mount.
• SLURM user doc page and example scripts elsewhere updated:
• Warning on making assumptions on cluster defaults
• Better output and error file names for batch scripts
• Append mode indicated for batch scripts (updated on other pages also)
• --ntasks=1 and --nodes=1 explicitly included
• Highlighted that email notifications for SLURM jobs are not available in the ReD environment

• New doc section on News and Updates to ReD (this page!)
• Blurb for reviewing images in RStudio added
• Container docs now refers users to software sections
• Note on seff error added
• Parameter added to SLURM scripts for appended output/error logs (instead of overwrite)

• new R/RStudio v4.3.3 and v4.2.3 containers released with similar fixes as 12/10

• new R/RStudio v4.5.2 and v4.4.3 containers released:
• INLA run script permissions fixed
• correct timezone included
• R_LIBS_USER now implemented site-wide for RStudio (but not yet R itself)
• Posit Package Manager URLs now included
• leveraging parallel builds/installs for reduced build times (2.67x faster)
• removed cached installation files and reduced build layers