Interactive Apps

Starting an Interactive App

All currently available Pomona College OnDemand applications can be accessed from the "Interactive Apps" tab in the navigation bar. When you click on one of the options, you'll be directed to the session configuration page for that specific application. Besides the ones listed in the menu, you can launch other applications. To do this, start with the "Desktop" application, and from there, run your desired application.

Session Configuration

On the session configuration page within Pomona College's OnDemand portal, you can customize various settings for your application session. For every application, you have the flexibility to allocate:

Number of Hours: Define the duration for which the session should run.
Number of Cores: Specify the number of CPU cores or GPUs you need.
Amount of RAM: Determine the memory allocation for the session.

Most applications allow you to select any of the versions available on the HPC.

Launching Your Application

Once you've adjusted the configuration settings to your preference, press the blue "Launch" button to initiate the session. You'll then be navigated to the "My Interactive Sessions" page, where your newly initiated job, along with any other ongoing or queued OnDemand jobs, will be displayed. Depending on the resources you've chosen and the current load on the Pomona College Computing system, your job might be in a queue awaiting available resources. Please note that you cannot connect to a session while it's in the queue. The current status of your session is shown in the top right corner of the session's panel:

Queued: Your job is in line, waiting for the necessary resources to initiate.
Starting: Your job is in the process of beginning and setting up.
Running: Your job is fully operational and ready for use.

If you've mistakenly input any parameters, or if there's an issue with your job submission, a pink notification box will appear at the top of the page titled "Failed to submit session with the following error:", detailing the encountered issue. You'll need to rectify any configuration discrepancies to resolve the error and successfully launch your application.

It's crucial to understand that even if you sign out of OnDemand or close the browser, your sessions will persist and continue consuming computational resources until the specified session duration expires. To terminate active OnDemand sessions, visit the "My Interactive Sessions" page.