Welcome to the Office of Research Computing. Staff are happy to assist you in getting started with your new account. We offer documentation on our website, new user training, seminars, as well as many other services.

Request an Account

BYU faculty and students may request an account. Students and non-CFS-track faculty are required to have a sponsor who is CFS-track faculty. Account requests are typically approved within 2-3 business days.

Office of Research Computing accounts are privileges to be used in conjunction with and in support of BYU research activities and for course usage, if the course usage would not differ significantly in requirements from typical research usage. Office of Research Computing resources are not to be used for non-BYU research programs.

Request an Account

Support and Training

Employees are available to help with new user training, workflow optimization, software installation, and general problem resolution.

Support is available via our support ticket tracker at https://rc.byu.edu/ticket. The ticket tracker is also accessible through email at rcsupport@byu.edu. It will be easier for both you and the staff if you already have some basic knowledge of Linux commands, such as how to copy files using cp or scp, list files in a directory, etc. The Linux Tutorial on our website is a quick way to get started.

We offer one-on-one new user training with one of our employees. Please contact us if you would like this training. We ask that you watch the Getting Started videos before requesting one-on-one training.

Two-factor authentication

You must set up two-factor authentication before you can log into Office of Research Computing systems. This is separate from the university's Duo implementation.

YouTube Channel

The Office of Research Computing has a YouTube Channel. The Getting Started Playlist is definitely the most important series of videos to watch.

The Basics

Cheat Sheet for New Users

Print this cheat sheet and stick it by your computer while you're getting started with the Office of Research Computing.

Linux/Unix

All Office of Research Computing systems run Linux. If you are new to Linux, please take some time to go through the Linux tutorial. If you want to learn how to use the text editor vim (or vi), please run vimtutor after connecting to our systems via ssh, or play Vim Adventures.

How to log in and transfer files

See Logging In and Transferring Files.

How to submit jobs

A lot of documentation is maintained in the Documentation tab of the website under Job Submission. The Slurm Script Generator will help you generate a submission script so that you can launch jobs on our system. Slurm Commands has a few important commands listed. General Batch Information is also a useful resource.

Applications/Compilers

Application documentation is maintained on the Applications page. Some applications are documented due to peculiarities of the application itself. Many programs are not documented on the website.

Lmod environment modules are the main way to access installed software. Some easy examples of Lmod use are available here.

You may install software in your home directory or group directories as long as you are permitted to do so by the software vendor (i.e. you have the appropriate licenses). The code must be able to run under 64-bit Linux. Please contact us if you need help, especially if the software requires a license server.

We ask that you first make some effort yourself to install your applications before requesting assistance. We are typically overloaded with requests to install software for users. It may take days or weeks for anyone to even look at it, by which time you possibly could have installed it yourself.

Applications may also be installed system-wide if there is enough demand for it. You can also install software in a group directory that you create or have access to.

Notices and alerts

Website

Urgent alerts are posted at the top of this website. Lower priority notifications are posted at the bottom of this website. Both alerts and notices are included in the message of the day upon logging in over ssh. Notices/alerts include notification of system maintenance, downtime, and other announcements. Emails are also sent for important announcements.

RSS

There is an RSS feed that can be integrated in a feed reader such as Firefox, akregator, or Google.

Calendar

The Office of Research Computing calendar is available at https://rc.byu.edu/calendar.

Notes about your account

Students

Students must have a faculty member sponsor their account. Your account will generally be set to expire one year from the time you requested it. In order for your account to remain active, you and your sponsor must both have active, non-expired accounts. You will receive an email reminder to renew your account one month before the expiration date.

Faculty

Your account will generally be set to expire one year from the time you requested it. You will receive an email reminder to renew your account one month before the expiration date.

If you have a sponsor-only (or web-only) account, please remember that you can log in with your netid and BYU Route Y password. All others must use their password that is specific to the Office of Research Computing.

Programming Languages

If you're not sure what programming language to use, try Julia. Julia is easy to use, designed for scientific computing, and is almost as fast as C.