---------------------------------------------------------------------- H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE H H P P C C -------------------------- HHHHH PPP C x x provided by H H P C C xx EPCC and H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx User Mailing 034 12 March 2004 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents ** Tape archive documentation ** Project groups and disc quotas ** The interactive-parallel region ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings-- TAPE ARCHIVE DOCUMENTATION Draft documentation for the new tape archive facility can now be found here: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/documentation/archive_user_guide.doc ...rather than the place I said last week. The documentation is currently available only in MS Word format. As I mentioned last week, we are looking for early users of the tape archive, to help us gather users' reactions to the way it a dn its user interace have been configured. If you would be interested in taking part, please get in touch at support@hpcx.ac.uk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PROJECT GROUPS AND DISC QUOTAS The following is being added to the FAQ. Some people have had problems in this area; I hope this will help. If you need more information, please mail to support@hpcx.ac.uk. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Q. Why are files which I create being charged to the wrong disk quota? A. Disk quotas for consortia and project groups on HPCx are implemented using UNIX group quotas. Each consortium initially has one UNIX group (GID), and every member of the consortium belongs to this; we call this the main project group. When another project group within a consortium is created with a disk quota of its own, a new UNIX group is assigned to it. At the same time, a directory for it is created on each volume where it has a quota of its own: /home or /work. For example, if the consortium code is x01, and a project group x01-abc is created with a quota on /work, then a directory /hpcx/work/x01/x01-abc will be created. Every user who is a member of a project group will have a directory within the directory for that project group. So if user 'max' is a member of the /x01-abc group, they will have a directory /hpcx/work/x01/x01-abc/max Any file created in this directory will normally be in the x01-abc group, and so will count against x01-abc's quota. If you create another directory within x01-abc, it will also belong to that group, and so will all files created there, and so on. So if you follow this scheme, all the files you create will count against the right quota. There are one or two things which can cause problems. The first is that people belong to more than one project group. In particular, each user belongs to the main project group of the consortium (in this case, x01) as well as any other project groups. This means that our user 'max', for example, will have a directory /x01/x01/max, as well as /x01/x01-abc/max. If 'max' goes to /x01/x01/max and creates a file there, it will normally belong to the main project group, and so will count against the quota for x01, not x01-abc. When you log in, you will initially be in your main project group directory. If you want to create files which belong to another project group, you must first go to that directory. (In fact, some people use the same account to work in more than one consortium. When you log in, you will be in one of these; to create files which belong to another, you must go to the appropriate directory.) Another problem is using the 'cp -p' (or 'scp -p') commands. If you do this, the file you create will have the same group as the original it's copied from, even if it's in a directory which belongs to another group. You can always check what group a file belongs to by using the 'ls -l' command. If you find files that aren't in the 'correct' group, you can change them by using the 'chgrp' command. For example: chgrp -R mine x01-abc ...will change the group of 'mine' and all the directories and other files inside it to group 'x01-abc'. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- THE INTERACTIVE-PARALLEL REGION I discussed the use of the interactive-parallel region of the system in mailing 20 on 15 August 2003. This region is intended for jobs which need to be interactive; in particular, for TotalView runs. It's quite small: just 4 LPARs, 32 processors. It seems to us that some people have been using this region for long series of 32-processor jobs which don't really need to run interactively at all. This is pretty anti-social; can I ask people, please, not to do it? See the 'Interactive Execution' section in the User Guide: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/documentation/UserGuide/HPCxuser/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Regards --John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Earlier mailings: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/notices/index.html To be removed from the mailing list: log into your website account, go to the "Update" page, and click the "Opt out of user emails" field; then click "Commit update". -- John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555