screen

screen is a usefull tool to keep long time tasks (a.e. magma, matlab) running on a computer without keeping your session online while the whole computation

• open a console and connect through SSH to the machine you want to run the task on (most likely: compute.math.uzh.ch) by typing the host name: [user@tlX] compute and enter your password (there is a script called 'compute' which does nothing else then 'ssh compute' - in our evironment it's not necessary to type 'ssh compute')

• type screen <application name> . F.e.: screen maple

• to detach from screen ("send it to background"), press Ctrl + A + D

• you now can log off from the terminal and your task will keep running
• if you want to check progress of your computations, log in to the machine where your task is running like you did before

• use screen -raAd to connect to your task