Talapas Desktop

Want to use Talapas with a GUI? You can use the Talapas Desktop App to run code on interactive compute nodes for up to 12 hours. This app will launch an interactive desktop on one or more compute nodes. You will have full access to the resources these nodes provide. This is analogous to an interactive Slurm job.

Because Talapas Desktop sessions are connected to compute nodes, you can run code (through the terminal) or software applications directly.

Configuring Talapas Desktop

The Talapas Desktop App can be found by navigating to OnDemand->Interative Apps->Talapas Desktop. Before the applications starts, you will encounter a configuration screen. Just like any Talapas job, the more resources you ask for, the longer it will take to schedule.

example Talapas desktop session An example Talapas Desktop configuration screen

PIRG: During the training period, you can use racs_training, but you should use your lab’s PIRG after these trainings finish.

SLURM Partition: You have two choices: interactive (CPU-based jobs) or interactivegpu (if you need GPUs). Only request a GPU if your code or software pipeline can use one.

Number of hours: Be considerate and ask only for as much time as you need. You can ask for up to 12 hours on interactive, 8 hours on interactivegpu.

CPU Cores: You must ask for at least 1. Only code or software packages that are configured to do so can take advantage of multiple cores.

Total memory: We typically recommend 4GB per CPU core. You can ask for up to 100GB.

GPU enabled: Only check if you require a GPU. To use a GPU, this box must be checked AND you must run on the interactivegpu partition.

Reservation: If you don’t know what that means, please leave this box blank.

When you have configured this to your satisfaction (the default settings are adequate for most users), press Launch.

Using Talapas Desktop

After pressing Launch, you will be navigated to the OnDemand Sessions page.

example session page An example Talapas Desktop session screen This page stores records of current and previous sessions. When your Talapas Desktop job schedules, you will see a screen like this. The more resources you ask for, the longer it will take for the Talapas Desktop session to begin.

Click the Launch Talapas Desktop button to open the application.

Running Code on Talapas Desktop

Talapas Desktop sessions are held on compute nodes. That means you can open the *Mate Terminal application in the top left corner, load desired modules, and run scripts against data on GPFS *without interacting with Slurm because you’re already on the interactive partition. example session

RStudio on Talapas Desktop

Want to run RStudio on Talapas? Perform the following steps:

Open a Mate Terminal session from within Talapas Desktop.
Load the version of R you require. Here we use 4.4.2, but feel free to choose whichever you need.
```
 module load R/4.4.2
```
Load the rstudio module. Freddy has a custom version with the following name.
```
 module load rstudio/base
```
Launch the RStudio app by typing the following into the terminal.
```
 rstudio
```
RStudio should launch inside Talapas Desktop.

rstudio An example RStudio session on Talapas Desktop

Cleaning Up

Your Talapas Desktop job will continue to run until the requested time limit elapses or until you cancel the job.

If you finish your work before the time limit ends, you can free up resources for other Talapas users by clicking the red Delete button for the job as it appears on the OnDemand sessions page.