This is an old revision of the document!
I need to use the local scratch area, may I? How? Is it backupped?
Generally each linux workstation should have a local disk area called /scratch
You can write your data there.
First you have to create a subdirectory in the /scratch directory using the following command from a linux shell:
mkdir /scratch/yourusername
Put your files in /scratch/yourusername directory, NOT in /scratch
Local directories (for example /scratch /data /tmp etc.) are never saved (“backupped”)!!
For I/O intensive applications (i.e. huge data on input/output files), you are strongly suggested to use the local disk of the workstation, where your executable is running and NOT your home directory. Since the latter is accessed by the workstation through the network, the reading and writing procedure could slow down terribly and make the performance of your application worse.
You can not access to workstations local scratch areas from outside SISSA through the server ssh.sissa.it
Please note, there is a NEWS: From the external network you can reach your linux workstation and so reach its /scratch area using the VPN connection.
To use the VPN connection, you have to install the VPN client on your laptop, so
please read the information on Cisco VPN client installation page.