Roar Portal

Below is a link to your Roar Portal:

https://portal.hpc.psu.edu/

You cannot access your Roar portal until you create an account (information below)

Create Roar Account

All students should request an account on Roar Collab before the end of the first day of class. To create an account, use the link below:

https://accounts.hpc.psu.edu/users/

On the account request form:

  • Affiliation: Class
  • University role: Undergraduate Student
  • Sponsor Account: jxz224
  • I agree with the terms and conditions in the Roar Account Policies: Check
  • Research Description: jxz224 Astro-410 Fall 2026 course
  • Computational and Data Requirements: Leave blank (they already know what will be required for the class.) Click Submit.

Once your account is created, or if you already have an account, email the instructor J. J. Zanazzi at jxz224@psu.edu, so I can add you to the group.

Start and Ending Roar Sessions

Once you have a Roar account,

  1. Go to the Roar portal
  2. Click Interactive Desktop: Start a desktop session
  3. Select:
    • Account: “jxz224” (if not available, choose “open”)
    • Partition: basic
    • Number of hours: 1.5 hour (you can choose longer if you plan to continue directly after class)
    • Number of cores: 1 (unless otherwise asked, may increase for later sessions)
    • Memory: 4 GB (unless otherwise asked)
    • Enable advanced Slurm options: Leave unchecked
    • I would like to receive an email when the session starts: Your choice! Note that the script and account above will be avaliable between August 24 and the end of the Fall 2026 semester.
  4. Click Launch
  5. Open terminal, load modules, etc.
  6. Submit assignments
  7. Save changes on Jupyter server, click File then Close Notebook on open notebooks, and File and Quit Server on Jupyter server
  8. In the Roar Collab Portal, click the My Interactive Sessions icon (to the right of Interactive Apps) and click Delete for this session and confirm

Loading Modules to Run Jupyter Notebooks

To run anything on roar, either through the RC terminal access or the interactive desktop, you need to load modules. Almost all course materials run using jupyter notebook, which need Firefox to run the internet browser, python to run the code, and anaconda and anaconda3 to run the specific features that make Jupyter Notebooks interactive. Therefore, after opening a terminal in your Roar Collab session, you need to run the following commands before opening a jupyter notebook:

module load firefox
module load python
module load anaconda
module load anaconda3

To open a specific jupyter notebook, say jup_notebook.ipynb, you run the command

jupyter notebook jup_notebook.ipynb

and the notebook should open in a firefox browser.

Note that any changes need to be saved before ending your session, either by hitting ctrl+s when working on the notebook, or clicking the Save/Floppy Disk icon on the top toolbar. Once saved, you can end the session by hitting ctrl+c, typing y or yes, and hitting Enter.