Mathematica Remote Kernels

Launching Remote Kernels in Mathematica

This page assumes that you've already followed the instructions in Cluster SSH access and you have all of that working.

There are other ways to set this up, including lots of menus in Mathematica for the remote kernel settings. The instructions on this are vague and confusing, so for now we're just entering the information directly in the Mathematica code window, because it's simple and it works. Any suggestions for better ways to do this are welcome, and when we find better way to do it, we'll update the documentation.

Also, since this is written by someone who is not very familiar with Mathematica syntax, the large 'LaunchKernels' command for 40 nodes shown below could be done much more easily, for instance, using a loop to generate the string for the machine list passed to the LaunchKernels command, or some other loop that will do the same thing without having to cut and paste that giant command.

Here are the instructions:

On your Linux desktop, start up Mathematica.

We'll start by launching kernels on two of the other cruncher machines, since this is a simple example to start with.

For this example, we're going to start 4 kernels each on ramsey and fibonacci.

In the Mathematica window, type the following:

LaunchKernels[{"ssh://ramsey/?4","ssh://fibonacci/?4"}]