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.