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How to Work with Computers

Overview

Terminal

  • Grab a good terminal application! (I personally use iTerm2 for Mac)
  • Grab a good font! (I personally use Meslo 13pt)
  • Grab a good screen!

Mobile Shell (mosh)

Ever feel frustrated when

  • you have to reconnect to the server every time your computer wakes up?
  • it lags while you are on tethered internet/airplane WiFi?

No sweat!

local~$ mosh $MY_ID@nightingale.csail.mit.edu

Jupyter Notebook

Ever feel frustrated when

  • you have to remember every argument to properly start notebook?
  • you have to copy the port over to browser?
  • you get 
    /usr/bin/xdg-open: 778: /usr/bin/xdg-open: iceweasel: not found
/usr/bin/xdg-open: 778: /usr/bin/xdg-open: seamonkey: not found
...

No sweat!

# remote:~/.bashrc
alias notebook="jupyter notebook --ip 0.0.0.0 --port $MY_FAV_PORT --no-browser"

and always go to http://nightingale.csail.mit.edu:$MY_FAV_PORT.

Did you know there's a terminal interface?

Bourne Shell (bash)

Ever feel frustrated when

  • there is not a default virtual environment when you log in?
  • always having to type nvidia-smi for nvidia-smi?

No sweat!

Just add aliases and startup scripts to ~/.bashrc!

# remote:~/.bashrc
if (tty -s); then
    source activate $MY_CONDA_PATH
fi

alias smi="nvidia-smi"

Notes

Some very useful command

  • htop: monitors basically everything, from CPU load, memory, to process IDs

Terminal Multiplexer (tmux) and longtmux

Ever feel frustrated when

  • you want to run very long tasks and need to keep ssh open?
  • seeing this when your session runs over 8 days on the server? 
    Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding
LookupError: no codec search functions registered: can't find encoding

Current thread 0x00007f2e99afc700 (most recent call first):
Aborted

No sweat!

# Getting your Kerberos ticket, "--keychain" enables you to use only "kinit" from now on
local~$ kinit --keychain $MY_ID@CSAIL.MIT.EDU
# Fire up a longtmux remotely and quit, because
local~$ ssh $MY_ID@nightingale.csail.mit.edu longtmux
# Because we want to MOSH IN and tmux [a]ttach that session
local~$ mosh $MY_ID@nightingale.csail.mit.edu tmux a

When your ticket expire on the server

remote~$ kinit && aklog

There are more with tmux!

  • Custom status bar
  • Split panes
  • Split tabs
  • Mouse support (Yes, you can click in text editors with mouse! Even drag those separators!)
# remote:~/.tmux.conf
set-option -g base-index 1
set-option -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
# ... (see .tmux.conf for more)

Anaconda (conda)

Ever feel frustrated when

  • you find messy package dependencies that pip does not quite manage well
  • you want to share virtual environment between collaborators

No sweat!

To create from an exported yml file

# The exported yml should contain a minimal list of dependencies to avoid clutter
remote~$ conda env create -f environment.yml

To create a shared environment

# Make sure your current python interpreter is accessible by all users!
remote~$ deactivate
# Please refer to the hard disk section to check the shared folder to use
remote~$ conda env create --prefix $SHARED_FOLDER python=3.6.5 --copy

Notes

  • conda can be slow installing packages as it checks beyond python package dependencies: it also checks for library dependencies
  • When you encounter OSError: [Errno 28] No space left on device: this is because conda caches packages in your ~/.conda. Simply do conda clean -a

pip

Ever feel frustrated when

  • conda takes forever to install simple packages?

No sweat!

remote~$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Notes

Useful packages for various purposes

  • gpustat: GPU stats. Best used as watch --color gpustat -ucp --color

  • tqdm: nice progress bar to monitor training progress
  • htmltag + json2html: pretty demo for your project

remote~$ pip install powerline-shell
# remote:~/.bashrc
function _update_ps1() {
    PS1=$(powerline-shell $?)
}

if [[ $TERM != linux && ! $PROMPT_COMMAND =~ _update_ps1 ]]; then
    PROMPT_COMMAND="_update_ps1; $PROMPT_COMMAND"
fi

Machines

Name Memory GPU Best used for
nightingale 1008 GB 4 x GeForce GTX TITAN X CPU memory intensive tasks
harrison 126 GB 4 x GeForce GTX TITAN X GPU intensive tasks
gray 126 GB 4 x GeForce GTX TITAN X GPU intensive tasks
safar 193 GB CPU intensive tasks
  • Transfer files between machines with rsync rather than using shared disk

GPU (Very important!)

Ever feel frustrated when

  • some takes all available GPU memory but not actually performing any computation?
  • managing multiple experiments running on multiple machines?

No sweat!

  • Limit memory growth! 
    config = tf.ConfigProto()
config.gpu_options.allow_growth = True
session = tf.Session(config=config, ...)
  • Set CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES environment variable before running the program 
    remote~$ CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0 python mine-ethereum-hehe.py
  • Fill in GPU allocation sheets!

Hard Disk

Ever feel frustrated when

  • running out of disk space right before a deadline?
  • migrating data across devices to work across machines?
  • oh snap I deleted my code!

No sweat!

  • Information in the table may not be accurate, please correct me
  • Need discussion here: periodic housekeeping?
Type Mount path Purpose Backup
AFS ~ or /afs/csail.mit.edu/u/m/$MY_ID lightweight files (code, cache) ~/.snapshot
NFS (production tier) /data/medg (raw data)? /data/medg/misc/.zfs/snapshot
Local (each machine) /crimea datasets
Local (each machine) /scratch (cached data, models)?

Notes

  • How much storage is the current directory using? du -sh
  • What about the disks? How much space is left? df -h

Case study

Starting a project

  1. Figure out a group name of the project, and ask system admin to create a user group on all machines (or the specific machine you are working on) with all collaborators added the group.

  2. Identify a dataset root (e.g., /data/medg/misc/definitely-not-cryptomining) with the correct group access (chgrp -R ...).

  3. Locate a folder for code (e.g., ~/definitely-not-cryptomining). Note that the code should be only accessible by you; any code sharing should happen over version control software.

  4. Find a local working root directory (e.g. /scratch/definitely-not-cryptomining), and sync data over with rsync.

  5. (Optional, but extremely recommended) Instantiate a shared virtual environment in the local directory.

  6. Happy coding.

  7. When you are running tasks, try htop and nvidia-smi (or watch --color gpustat -ucp --color) to determine the best machines/GPUs. Try not to overuse hardware resources.

  8. Save intermediate results/models to local project directory.

  9. Periodically push your local git commits to GitHub.

Harry's setup

  1. I have mosh set up, so basically the following login steps are persistent for a few days before I restart the sessions.

  2. On local machine I have the following bash functions that enable blazing fast access: only need to kinit && tmux-csail nightingale

    function tmux-csail() {
    ssh stmharry@$1.csail.mit.edu longtmux
    mosh stmharry@$1.csail.mit.edu tmux a
}

  3. I can access different machines on different iTerm tabs, and since inside a tmux session I as well have tabs for file editing, program running, and resource monitoring. (i.e. tmux tabs under iTerm tabs)

  4. I use vim as the editor for most code editing for a lot of python handy plugins. I can edit a handful of files at the same time for its support for tabs. (i.e. vim tabs under tmux tabs under iTerm tabs)

  5. In my ~/.bashrc there are a few aliases that helps me with commands.