...

1. Connect to the Tufts High Performance Compute Cluster. See Connecting Access for a detailed guide.
   
   

2. Load the Python module with the following command:

   Code Block
   module load python

   Note that you can see a list of all available modules (potentially including different versions of Python) by typing:

   Code Block
   module avail

   You can specify a specific version of Python with the module load command or use the generic module name (python) to load the latest version.  

3. Start a Python session by typing:

   Code Block
   python

   Code Block
   print("Hello, World!")

A Simple Test

To make sure that Spark and PySpark are working properly, lets load an RDD and perform a simple function on it. In this example, we will create a text file with a few lines and use PySpark to count both the number of lines and the number of words.

1. Create a new text file in your home directory on the cluster using nano (or your favorite text editor):

   Code Block
   nano test.txt

2. Put a few lines of text into the file and save it, for example:

   Code Block
   This is line one This is line two This is line three This is line four

3. Load the file into an RDD as follows:

   Code Block
   rdd = sc.textFile("sparktest.txt")

   Note that you case use the type() command to verify that rdd is indeed a PySpark RDD.

4. Count the number of lines in the rdd:

   Code Block
   lines = rdd.count()

5. Now you can use the split() and flatMap() functions to count the number of individual words:

   Code Block
   words = rdd.flatMap(lambda x: x.split()).count()

...

Python related:

How can I verify if a particular Python package is installed?
Add-on tools such as numpy and scipy are installed. Others would be under the install tree located at:
/opt/shared/python/
in the version specific site-packages directory.   Another approach uses pip.

For a more detailed overview of Python and how it relates to Big Data or High Performance Computing (HPC) please contact tts-research@tufts.edu for information regarding future workshops.

...