RDS Shares

You can connect to a share on RDS from the cluster by using the command below.  In the command, we are using bmi-s.  This would connect to the same network share as mapping \\rds6\bmi-s from your workstation.  Note that you only need to enter the share (and optionally a sub-directory), not the entire path.

The first step is optional.  Not running it will require you to type in your password every time you connect.  Therefor, if you submit a job which will connect to a RDS share, then running this will be the best option. 

rds credentials

This command creates an encrypted file with your CCHMC credentials which will be used in the cluster. ** WARNING**, after a CCHMC credentials change you must be sure to re-run this before attempting any of the below commands.  Failure to do so can risk your CCHMC account being locked.   Typically when a user has this issue, it's because they have a job/script that connects to RDS shares.

rds connect bmi-s

You will be prompted for your password if encrypted credentials file was not created. If the connection is successful, it will print the path where the data has been mounted.  This should generally be /users/$USER/rds/$SHARE.

When you are done and wish to disconnect from the RDS share, you can run the command again but specify disconnect.  We are again using bmi-s as an example, and this will need replaced with the actual share you want to disconnect from.

rds disconnect bmi-s

The rds command is a script that we have implemented to simplify the process for you.  It is safe to call multiple times for the same share; you will need to call disconnect an equal number of times before the share is actually disconnected.  This means that you can safely put these commands at the start and end of your batch jobs and be sure that the share won't be disconnected until the last of your jobs on a node completes.

Additionally, users have the option to run a command that will create an encrypted file in their home directory so that credentials are no longer needed at the time of running the above command.