RStudio server

x. Usage

x.1 Where is my data?

  • Project data on our Ceph storage is mounted in /mnt/smb.hdd.rbd, otherwise accessible as smb://bfh.ch/data/LFE (Linux, macOS) or P:LFE (Windows).

  • User homes on our Ceph storage are otherwise accessible as smb://bfh.ch/data/LFE/Users (Linux, macOS) or P:LFEUsers (Windows).

Note: due to fact that BFH.science and BFH.ch do not run on the same network infrastructure, you cannot access any data on the BFH.ch-only storage (that is anything on smb://bfh.ch/data outside of LFE, or P:outside of P:LFE). Moving BFH.ch to the BFH.science network infrastructure until the end of 2021 will change this.

x.2 If RStudio fails (no login page), how can I restart it?

It happens that RStudio hangs and you cannot access your current session anymore. The following steps allow you to restart RStudio and resume your work.

  • Login via ssh to your server (replace ${bfh-account} with your BFH account, e.g. bad9): ssh r.${bfh-account}.bfh.science

  • Stop rstudio server: sudo service rstudio-server stop

  • Kill rstudio sessions: sudo rstudio-server kill-all

  • Kill rstudio backend: sudo killall -9 rserver

  • Start rstudio server: sudo service rstudio-server start

If you do not have SSH access to your server yet, send a email to: servicedesk@bfh.ch

x.3 If RStudio starts (login page is there), but my session is corrupted, how can I delete it?

If you allocated too much memory, it can happen that you cannot resume your session (remember: RStudio is ment to be used as an development enviroment to work on your code, not to run large computations. Those should be run via SSH using screen or any other terminal multiplexer).

To remove an active session (this does not affect your data, but unsafed code will be lost), follow the following steps.

  • Login via ssh to your server (replace ${bfh-account} with your BFH account, e.g. bad9): ssh r.${bfh-account}.bfh.science

  • Stop rstudio server: sudo service rstudio-server stop

  • Remove the active session (there’s only one): rm -rf .rstudio/sessions/active

  • Start rstudio server: sudo service rstudio-server start

If you do not have SSH access to your server yet, send a email to: <a href=”mailto:servicedesk@bfh.ch”>servicedesk@bfh.ch</a>

x.4 R doesn’t use all available processor cores

R has a hardcoded limit of 125 threads, on machines with more CPUs than that (e.g. 256), this can be overwritten by passing <tt>–max-connections</tt>, see #28.