This course is tailored for users who have previous experience with R and want to get started using R in CSC supercomputers.

"This is what everyone should know about our HPC environment when launching jobs!"

To access and use supercomputers like Puhti and Mahti, you need to be able to work with text-based Command Line Interface (CLI). This is a new challenge to many people who are more used to using Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) in Windows and macOS. 

This course provides users with "basic command line skills" that are a prerequisite in many CSC courses. To make sure you get the most out of the other courses, please go through this material and skill tests first. Happy journey on the command line!

Print screen of command line where the user is trying different commands and finally typing "help, what am I doing here?".


This course builds upon the earlier Introduction to Linux course. We expect people to be familiar with the concepts of file-system related (ls, rm, mkdir, cd ...) commands and have a basic knowledge about the shell. At the end of the course the students should be able to build workflows inside bash and to use POSIX text utilities to search, reorder and modify larger data and files. In other words, to use the shell in production related to scientific computing.


Program, December 16th

09:00 – 09:30 Morning coffee & registration
09:30 – 09:45 Introduction to the course
09:45 – 10:45 Recapping Introduction to Linux course
10:45 – 11:30 Working with the Bash shell, pt. I (shell internals)
11:30 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 13:30 Working with the Bash shell, pt. II (programming constructs)
13:30 – 14:30 Pipes, named pipes and redirecting
14:30 – 15:00 Coffee
15:00 – 16:30 Hands-on exercises

Program, December 17th

09:00 – 10:00 Pattern matching and regular expressions
10:00 – 10:30 Coffee
10:30 – 11:30 Shell commands and utilities (replacing spreadsheets)
11:30 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 13:30 awk (rendering spreadsheets ridiculous)
13:30 – 14:30 Retrieving, compiling and running own programs
14:30 – 15:00 Coffee
15:00 – 16:30 Hands-on exercises