I wanted to run a REALLY long process on jones, but I wanted to be able to log off while it ran. If you too are a computational linguist, you may experience this very same desire! Read on, my friend.
Type screen. Then start your process. Then type [CTRL-A] [CTRL-D] to `detach' from the screen. You'll be back at your ordinary terminal. Use ps to notice that the process within screen is running, but screen itself is not listed. Now log off. Now log back in, and use ps again to observe that your process is still running. Type screen -r
Happy processing!
(Of course, I'm not sure if jones is scheduled to shut down regularly, or how often it gets shut down irregularly, so if it gets shut down while you are processing this incredibly long process, you will be out of luck unless you have a recovery-from-interruption plan in place for the process. Also people might get annoyed if you are hogging the processor. Open questions: Is there any etiquette about processor-hogging for legitimate purposes? Does one need a permission slip from one's professor to hog it for days on end? How about if one has a deadline coming up?)
Notes from Jones admin (Nathan Sanders):
Jones is restarted irregularly about every two months. You can use w to check how long it's been up. I don't restart it unless there are no jobs running, or it's an emergency.
People get annoyed when you hog all the RAM, because it makes the machine swap and become unusable for anything else, even text editing and viewing files. As for CPU, the scheduler is pretty good at giving interactive users enough time to edit files even when the processors are maxed out on a job. Run your job with nice if it becomes a problem.
- It might be a good idea to make sure your professor knows when you're running a long job even though Jones is technically first-come-first-served right now.
See also: nohup and nice on the UnixTricks page. nohup is probably harder to use than screen, given the above description.