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Intro to Machine Learning and AI on HCC - November 2025 Logistics

Setup

Please make sure to complete the setup steps below.

  1. Ensure your HCC Account is active.

  2. Sign into Swan's Open OnDemand Portal: https://swan-ood.unl.edu

  3. When you have signed into the Swan Open OnDemand Portal, please put up your Yellow Sticky Note or Green Checkmark.

If you have any issues logging in or accesing Swan, please visit our event troubleshooting guide here

You will need access to the NRP

Access is required for this workshop. We will be using a specific namespace/group during this workshop.

To get access, complete all of the steps below:

  1. Sign into NRP: https://nrp.ai/

  2. When you are signed in, you should see your email at the top right of your screen.
    Similar to: NRP Configuration Location

  3. Please enter your email in this form so we can give you access to the resources for the tutorial today:

https://forms.office.com/r/rXgLJuM2bG

Sticky Notes and Reactions

Throughout the workshop, we will use sticky notes to indicate status. These help instructors and helpers in the workshop assist with various issues and provide formative feedback during the workshops.

Please make sure the sticky note is visibly on both the front and back of your laptop

  • Yellow Sticky Note: All good to go
  • Red Sticky Note: I need help or I am not ready to continue

Workshop Recommendations

To make the most of this workshop, we strongly encourage active participation throughout the entire session, including participating in the hands-on exercises and asking questions throughout the workshop.

If you are stuck or not sure on something at any point of the workshop, please let us know and we would be happy to help.

Participation can be accomplished by using the sticky notes or raising hands.

Workshop Website: https://hcc.unl.edu/hcc-ai-and-ml-workshop-nov2025

Feedback Form: https://forms.office.com/r/fakRPkrcCe

Introduction to Bash

Command History Link: https://hcc.unl.edu/swc-history/20251105.html

Slides Link:

Download Materials

  1. Open a terminal in Open OnDemand (OOD). This is done by opening the "Clusters" menu at the top of the screen and selecting "Swan Shell Access"
  2. Change to your $WORK directory and run git clone https://github.com/unlhcc/hcc-ai-ml-workshop-2025.git. Verify that the data was downloaded using the ls command.

Setup Jupyter

Return the the OOD main page and start a "Jupyter Lab" session from the "Interactive Apps" menu using the settings in the section below.

Open OnDemand Settings

Open OnDemand WebForm Settings

Parameter Value
Jupyter Lab version 4.0
Working Directory /work/groupname/username
Number of cores 8
Running time in hours 3
Requested RAM in GBs 32
Partition selection guest_gpu
Reservation Located on the back of your name tag
GRES gpu
Job Constraints ---Leave BLANK---

Resource Reservation for GPUs: Located on back of nametags

JupyterLab Settings:

Parameter Value
INSIDE JUPYTER LAB: Kernel Name hcc-ai-ml-workshop-2025
  1. Navigate to the "hcc-ai-ml-workshop-2025" directory on the left hand side of the screen.
  2. Open the "prepare_datasets.ipynb" notebook and run all cells
  3. When all cells have finished execution without error, put up your YELLOW sticky note.

Git Lesson Link: https://swcarpentry.github.io/git-novice/

Open these at the start:

When we move to the hands-on activities

  1. Sign into the GP-ENGINE JupyterHub Portal: https://gp-engine.nrp-nautilus.io/
  2. Select Stack Datascience + K8s and click Start. This process will take a few minutes.
  3. Put up your green checkmark when you see it is complete.

Troubleshooting

PyTorch is not loading correctly in Tensorboard

This can be caused by running an old version of Tensorboard. Cancel the existing tensorboard job and resubmit with the latest version.

sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Requested node configuration is not available

For this workshop, make sure you are using the guest_gpu partition with the reservation and the normal QoS.