Getting started
Follow these steps to set up your account, check available resources, and submit your first job.
1. Prepare your account
Apply for an account and wait for activation. Provide your name, organization, research group or project, contact details, and expected resource needs. After activation:
- Verify that you can sign in to CHESS and change your initial password.
- Check your associated account, authorized partitions, and resource limits.
- Confirm access to your home or project directory.
See Account application.
Learn basic Linux commands first
The login nodes and computing environments primarily use the Linux command line. Learn directory navigation, file viewing, copying, moving, archiving, permissions, and text editing before preparing data and jobs.
See Linux basics and Common commands.
2. Check available resources
Choose a CPU, GPU, or large-memory partition to match your workload. Check available hardware and storage, partition limits, user/group/project limits, and billing rules.
See Cluster overview, Resource limits, Fees, and Partitions.
3. Sign in to CHESS
CHESS supports resource inspection, file management, terminals, job submission, billing, and preconfigured applications. Check My Resources (我的资源), inspect your directories in Data Management (数据管理), open Terminal, and read system notices.
See CHESS portal.
4. Prepare data and software
Upload input files and scripts to your home or project directory. Prefer English letters, digits, and underscores in paths. Choose suitable storage for large or long-lived data. Specify the partition, CPU cores, GPUs, time limit, and output paths in your job script. Check the required modules, containers, images, or applications before submission.
See Data sharing and Environment modules.
5. Submit and monitor jobs
Submit through the scheduler. Monitor pending, running, completed, and failed jobs; inspect standard output and error logs. Adjust resource requests or program options when necessary. Organize results and remove unneeded intermediate files after completion.
Reminders
- Keep passwords, keys, and tokens out of public scripts and shared directories.
- Check partition limits before submitting, and test large jobs with a small dataset first.
- Monitor storage quotas and clean up temporary files and logs.
- Verify that GPU applications actually use the allocated devices.
- Consult Acknowledgments and compute-time rewards when publishing work supported by the platform.