Physics 410: Computational Physics: Course News
This document will be updated throughout the course
Wednesday, December 6, 5:00 PM
A list of review topics for the final exam in available
HERE.
Tuesday, November 21, 10:00 AM
As mentioned in class last week, I will be away next week beginning Tuesday afternoon. We will
therefore have one make-up lecture:
Tuesday November 28, 8:30-9:20 AM, Hebb 10
and the course lectures per se will conclude with that Tuesday's regular 10:30 lecture.
The Thursday, November 30 8:30, lecture will be cancelled, but I ask that you
show up at that day at 10:30 AM to complete course evaluations.
Tuesday, November 14, 9:00 AM
Prof. Bernie Shizgal,
professor of Chemistry, and director of the
Institute for Applied Mathematics (IAM),
has indicated that there may be some positions available in the IAM for summer students, to
follow the establishment of a small Beowulf cluster, and the use of parallel
computing on one of several research projects. Any student interested in such a
position should contact Prof. Shizgal THIS WEEK by email at
shizgal@iam.ubc.ca.
Friday, November 10, 1:15 PM
I have updated the course sofware page
concerning the use of
Open GL
and GLUT on sgi1 and the
lnx machines. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the use
of this software, or if you encounter problems while using it. Note that
Postscript versions of the Open GL Programmers Guide, Open GL Reference
Manual, and GLUT Programmer's guide are available via the software
page.
Monday, October 23, 1:30 PM
The following accounts have been created on the new Computer Lab
PC/Linux machines, lnx1.physics.ubc.ca, lnx2.physics.ubc.ca
and lnx3.physics.ubc.ca:
astevens bhlee bpark cherring ckaiser cwlai elespt ericms
jaggarwa jnakane kbrought kimlam kkondra lauren mghafari
mwarren mzimonja petryk rcoope soundara weiyang zacfong
The passwords for these accounts should be the same as for the corresponding
accounts on sgi1. Please let me know immediately if you have
any problems logging in (using ssh, as usual) to any of these systems.
See HERE for some additional information
concerning these new machines.
IMPORTANT NOTE: At the current time, it seems that the "outside world"
may not be properly aware of the symbolic names lnx1.physics.ubc.ca etc.
If you have problems connecting to one of the lnx machines from
outside the physics.ubc.ca domain, try connecting using the
actual IP numbers of the machines:
Machine IP number
lnx1.physics.ubc.ca 142.103.235.134
lnx2.physics.ubc.ca 142.103.235.135
lnx3.physics.ubc.ca 142.103.235.136
Note that, within a shell, you can generally use an IP number anywhere
that you would use a hostname, e.g.
% ssh matt@142.103.235.134
Last login: Sat Oct 21 15:19:37 2000 from dsl105.net.ubc.ca
No mail.
[matt@lnx1 ~]$
.
.
.
Friday, October 20, 6:00 AM
Weiyang has
pointed out that when I created your accounts on the vn Beowulf
cluster, I neglected to install .cshrc and .aliases files
for you. This should now be fixed. Let me know if you encounter
other problems when working on vnfe1.physics.ubc.ca.
Friday, October 6, 12:00 PM
The final exam schedule for this term is now available
HERE. Our exam is currently scheduled as follows:
PHYS410 .101 Dec 18, 3:30 pm
Please let me know ASAP if there are appear to be any conflicts with
any of your other exams.
Tuesday, October 3, 3:00 PM
Contrary to what was claimed in the previous news item, the passwords which
I initially duplicated for your accounts on the cluster were
your initial passwords (which you all have dutifully changed
per Homework 1, Problem 0!).
I have now (I believe!) remedied the situation, so that your
current sgi1.physics.ubc.ca password should get you into your account
on vnfe1.physics.ubc.ca. Thanks go to Kesten for bringing this
to my attention.
Tuesday, October 3, 10:00 AM
The following accounts have been created on the vn Beowulf cluster:
aballest astevens bhlee bpark cherring ckaiser elespt ericms
jaggarwa jnakane kbrought kimlam kkondra lauren mghafari mrege
mwarren mzimonja rcoope sjwu soundara weiyang xinghua zacfong
The passwords for these accounts should be identical to those for the
corresponding accounts on sgi1.physics.ubc.ca. Note that your
home directories for the cluster are on the specific (front-end) machine
vnfe1.physics.ubc.ca
and that, until further notice, you should restrict your usage of
the cluster to vnfe1. Access to the cluster is via ssh.
Please refer to the cluster HOME PAGE
for additional information concerning its use.
Thursday, September 21, 3:00 PM
For reasons which would (should!) become apparent to you should you ever happen to list the
contents of ~matt/scripts, I recommend that all of you modify your ~/.cshrc
on sgi1 so that your path is set via
set path=(. $HOME/bin $HOMEMWC/scripts /usr/local/bin /usr/java/bin $path)
rather than
set path=($HOME/bin $HOMEMWC/scripts /usr/local/bin /usr/java/bin $path)
Although the latter (and original default) setting still ensures that '.' (the current
directory) is in your path, since the system start-up script includes '.' in the
path, the former, "corrected" setting will ensure that the current directory is
always searched first when a command is issued.
Tuesday, September 19, 9:30 AM
As at least two of you have already observed (thanks, Lauren and
Kevin), Pi is NOT a reserved
word in the version of Maple currently running on sgi1.physics.ub.ca.
If you are completing Problem 1 of Homework 2 using xmaple running on sgi1,
please OMIT the (successful) attempt to rename Pi from your worksheet.
Also, those of you who are running xmaple on sgi1, but displaying on a remote
workstation should note that you will get significantly better performance if you bypass
the ssh-encrypted channel, and let xmaple directly access the display of your
local machine. Specifically, on your local machine (temporarily) allow processes on
sgi1.physics.ubc.ca to access your local display via the xhost command:
local% xhost +sgi1.physics.ubc.ca
Then, on sgi1, save the old value of the DISPLAY environment variable,
reset that variable to point to your local display (here assumed to be
the console of somemachine.physics.ubc.ca), and start xmaple:
sgi1% setenv ODISPLAY "$DISPLAY"
sgi1% setenv DISPLAY somemachine.physics.ubc.ca:0.0
sgi1% xmaple
If and when you want to restore things to their original state, execute the following
on sgi1
sgi1% setenv DISPLAY "$ODISPLAY"
and, on your local console:
local% xhost -
Friday, September 8, 11:00 PM
I've modified the on-line Unix notes slightly to reflect the fact that
on physics.ubc.ca, you cannot alter your ~/.cshrc
file, but instead must modify
~/.cshrc.user.
Thursday, September 7, 3:45 PM
The following accounts have been set up on the Numerical Relativity SGI machine, sgi1.physics.ubc.ca
kbrought
soundara
lauren
xinghua
bpark
ericms
sjwu
aballest
astevens
all with the passwords which you supplied.
ALL STUDENTS: Contact me
IMMEDIATELY if cannot login using
% ssh username@sgi1.physics.ubc.ca
Thursday, September 7, 3:30 PM
Kevin Lai has pointed out two more typos in the first Homework
Assignment.
Problem 0, line 1:
sgi1.physics.ubc.ca
^
the "1" is missing
Problem 2, line 1:
... which you may use to use to "publish" ...
^^^^^^
duplicated
The on-line version has been updated.
My apologies for the de-bugging the assignment is requiring!
Thursday, September 7, 2:00 PM
Something close to a final version of HW1 is available via
the Homework Page or
HERE
IMPORTANT NOTE 1: If you downloaded and printed the homework earlier
today, you have the wrong version, the correct version should
have 3 pages, and the third problem is labeled Problem 1b:
rather than Problem 1c:.
IMPORTANT NOTE 2: Those of you who picked up the assignment in
class, please note the above change, i.e. relabel Problem 1c:
as Problem 1b:. Thanks to Januk Aggarwal
for pointing out the gaffe.
Tuesday, September 5, 5:30 PM
The following accounts have been set up on the Numerical Relativity SGI machine, sgi1.physics.ubc.ca
jaggarwa
cherring
rcoope
zacfong
weiyang
ckaiser
kimlam
bhlee
jnakane
meenal
ctong
mwarren
mzimonja
all with the passwords which you invented this morning.
Note that in some cases I have used a second preference for an account name,
in order that you have the same account name on the SGIs as on physics.ubc.ca.
Tuesday, September 5
As per the scheduling exercise this morning, here is the revised class
schedule:
Tuesday 10:30 - 11:30 AM -- Hebb 13
Thursday 8:30 - 9:30 AM -- Hebb 12
Thursday 10:30 - 11:30 AM -- Hebb 12
Sunday, September 3
The first scheduled meeting times for the class are
Tuesday 8:30-9:30 AM -- Hebb 10
and
Tuesday 10:30-11:30 AM -- Hebb 13
If at all possible, please attend at least one of these classes (and,
if feasible, at least part of both), since the most important order
of business will be to reschedule the meeting times, so that if possible,
all who wish to take the course may do so without conflict. The instructor
is aware that some students currently have conflicts and will do everything
possible to resolve this matter.
Be sure to come to class with your current schedules so that we
can do the re-scheduling as efficiently as possible
If you CANNOT attend EITHER of the above classes, please e-mail
your schedule to the instructor, Matt
Choptuik, as soon as possible.