A few years ago, I created a tutorial about how to use a supercomputing cluster called the Open Science Grid. The supercomputer was available to all researchers affiliated with a United States institution, and it was easy to analyze large numbers of FreeSurfer subjects in a short period of time; for those whose analyses were restricted mostly to FreeSurfer, it was like having your own personal supercomputer. Once the data was analyzed you could then download it to your local machine and use it however you like.
In 2019 someone told me that FreeSurfer was no longer being supported on the Open Science Grid; consequently, I removed the video I had on YouTube explaining how to use it, and put a disclaimer on the corresponding chapter of Andy’s Brain Book. Recently, however, alert reader Christina Koch let me know that although fsurf has been deprecated, there is a new way to submit FreeSurfer jobs to the Open Science Grid. Here is what she wrote on my e-book:
“fsurf has been deprecated and is no longer supported; to run Freesurfer jobs on the OSG, you can request an account on the OSG Connnect service (available to all researchers affiliated with a US-based institution or project) and then follow the instructions on this page which shows how to submit your own Freesurfer workload to the OSG.”
I haven’t gotten the chance to work with it yet and make an updated video about how to use it, but I encourage everyone to check it out. If there are any issues, let me know before I begin trying it on my own.