Computing

The Computational Research Service provides a variety of shared computing environments in support of quantitative social science research in the College of Letters and Science.  See the software availability matrix to determine which packages are available on our various platforms.  All users must adhere to the CRS system policies and user guidelines as well as the broader UCD campus computer policies.

NOTE: THESE SYSTEMS ARE ONLY AVAILABLE TO L&S SOCIAL SCIENCE AFFILIATES. Many of the same applications are available through the IET Virtual Computer Lab, https://virtuallab.ucdavis.edu/.

CRS Labs

The CRS statistical labs are intended for social science faculty and graduate students who do not have access to equipment or software appropriate to their quantitative computing needs, or for users who need proximity to the CRS staff for consulting purposes.  The main lab (SSH 102) is equipped with 9 Dell Optiplex 7010 minitowers with i5 quad core 3.4 GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM memory, 250 GB hard drives, DVD-RW, 22" LCD monitors with scanner and printer.  A second smaller lab (SSH 111) provides data access and scanning equipment.

All social science faculty and graduate students may use their campus loginID to access CRS computers.  If your loginID does not work, submit a ticket to DSSIT.

Remote Desktop Server - farmer.ucdavis.edu

For users with occasional need for access to statistical applications packages for projects appropriate to desktop computing, the CRS provides a Remote Desktop Server named "farmer.ucdavis.edu".  This new system is a Dell R840 with: four 12-core 2.7GHz Intel Xeon processors, 768GB of memory, a fast SSD RAID for storage, and running Windows Server 2019.

To use the remote desktop server:

  1. Request an account on the CRS Remote Desktop Server. (Note: Only Affiliates of the College of L&S at UC Davis or sponsored researchers will be granted accounts.)
  2. Macintosh users will need to install Microsoft Remote Desktop from Apple.  For Windows, the client is built-in.
  3. If not on a College of Letters and Science networked computer, establish a OpenVPN connection.
  4. MacOSX users may receive a certificate error, but this can be ignored.  If the application does launch, go to your download folder and launch the file with the .rdp extension manually by double-clicking.

UNIX Server - scribe.ucdavis.edu

For large longer-term projects, for example where datasets exceed the available storage capacity, or methods exceed the computation capabilities of desktop systems, or where project datasets must be accessible to multiple users, the CRS maintains a central research UNIX server.  This new system is a Dell R840 with: four 12-core 2.7GHz Intel Xeon processors, 768GB of memory, a fast SSD RAID for storage, and running Redhat Enterprise Linux.

  1. Create an account on the CRS UNIX Server. (Note: Only Affiliates of the College of L&S at UC Davis or sponsored researchers will be granted accounts.)
  2. Your new account will be created on the server “scribe.ucdavis.edu”.  Usernames and passwords are handled by campus Kerberos, so your username is your campus ID and your password is the campus password.
  3. Please remember, the CRS UNIX system is still a SHARED SYSTEM and users should limit their number of jobs so others can carry out their work as well.  Please report any suspected abuse to the CRS staff (crs-help@ucdavis.edu).
  4. You MUST connect to the OpenVPN connectionbefore connecting to the UNIX system if you are off campus or using a campus wireless connection (Moobilenet, Moobilenetx, Eduroam).  You can find the details here:  .  Keep in mind that once connected ALL traffic from your machine will go through the DSS VPN server, so only connect when you are working on sapper.  Upon establishing a VPN connection, you can use any standard SSH client to connect to the server.
  5. Quotas are in effect on the UNIX system.  If you exceed your quota, the system will warn you to reduce your file space for a grace period of 10 days.  You may exceed your quota by no more than 5GB during the grace period.  After that period, you will be locked out and you must contact crs-help@ucdavis.edu to have your account re-enabled.  The default quota is 10GB for all users, and request to increase quotas are evaluated on a case by case basis.  You may check your quota with the command “quota –s”.  Files saved in the /scratch subdirectory are not counted towards your quota, so any temporary work files should be stored there.
  6. Upon receiving an email that your account has been created, you should make sure that you can log on to your account, and that you can access your files.  Please report any problem directly to the SSDS systems administrator.

High Performance Computing

The CRS also has cycles on the San Diego Supercomputer as part of the Triton Shared Computing Cluster or TSCC.  To learn more about this resource consult the SDSC Web site.  To determine whether your project is a suitable candidate for processing on the SDSC, contact crs-help@ucdavis.edu.

Cold Room

The Data Service has a cold room appropriate for use of restricted access or confidential data.