"Good Neighbor" Use Policy
Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center
University of New Mexico
The following guidelines for the appropriate use of AHPCC
computing facilities are to be followed by all users. These guidelines
are meant to ensure the security of user accounts as well as equitable
access to our computing facilities by all users.
Acceptable Use
By accepting an UNM-Alliance Roadrunner Supercluster account, I agree
that:
- I will be responsible for all use of this computer account.
- I will use the computer account for High Performance Computing
purposes and not for commercial purposes.
- I will not use the computer account to engage in any form of illegal
software copying or other copyright infringement.
- I will not attempt to access accounts, files or information belonging
to other users without their knowledge and consent.
- I understand the monitoring of user activity on the Albuquerque
High Performance Computing Center machines may occur.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE RULES WILL RESULT IN REMOVAL OF THIS ACCOUNT,
AND POSSIBLE DISCIPLINARY OR LEGAL ACTION
Security
Users are provided an initial Default Password in their new user packet.
You should change your password the first time you login and periodically
thereafter. If it is necessary for you to request a password change
from us (for example, when you have forgotten your current password),
your password will be set to this default. It is important that you
keep this form in a secure place for your reference. If you do not have
this form available, you will be required to wait until a duplicate
can be mailed to you via U.S. mail. AHPCC does NOT provide passwords
by phone, fax, or electronic mail.
General Considerations
The following considerations apply to running codes on any AHPCC computer.
- Users must regularly monitor their jobs to ensure that they
are not overburdening or hanging the machine they are using. This
is especially important for machines that are being used interactively.
Under UNIX, the ps, lsps, and vmstat commands provide
useful information about CPU utilization and the amount of paging
(memory utilization) that is going on in a system.
- Jobs running for long periods on machines that are used interactively
should be run with their priority reduced 10 units or more. (See the
man pages for the nice and renice commands.)
- Users should not lock the screen on terminals/computers intended
for public use when they are to be left unattended for more than a
few moments.
- Users should keep an Xterm window (console window) open to receive
system messages.
- All users should maintain current .plan, and if necessary,
.forward files for their AHPCC accounts. These will allow us
to provide you with timely notification of system shutdowns, changes
to software, etc. They also allow us to contact you should a program
you are running cause a problem with the system. The .plan
file should provide your name, current contact information (day and
evening phone numbers), and a brief description of the work you are
doing at the AHPCC. Your .plan file should also state whether
or not your AHPCC account is your primary account for reading E-mail.
If your AHPCC account is not your primary mail account, you should
also set up a .forward file to ensure that a copy of all your
messages are forwarded to your primary account.
- Access times. Access hours at the AHPCC are in general divided into
2 categories: prime time and non-prime time. During prime hours, which
run from 8am to 5pm on weekdays, priority access is given to workshops
or classes, students doing class work, parallel code development,
and production computation in that order. During non-prime hours,
which begin 15 minutes after the end of prime hours and end 15 minutes
before the start of prime hours, priority is generally given to production
computation, code development, and systems maintenance in that order.
Security Considerations
- No passwords, for AHPCC or any other machines, whether inside or
outside the University, are to be kept in a personal file on the AHPCC
file system such as the .rhosts file, .netrc file, unless
the file is encrypted with strong encryption (e.g. DES or public
key encryption). Violation of this condition may lead to immediate
and permanent expulsion from AHPCC systems. Any such violation will
also be reported to the MHPCC and NCSA, since it is anticipated that
this condition will apply as well to any accounts eventually granted
on other HPCERC or PACI partner machines. For security reasons, it
is strongly recommended that users adhere to this policy on all network
machines on which he or she has accounts.
- For your own protection and that of the AHPCC community, the AHPCC
password shall consist of a minimum of 8 characters with no repeats.
At least one character should be a non-alphabetic character. The user's
name should not appear as any part of the password. Adherence to this
policy will be spot-checked with standard password-breaking security
programs.
- Users making insecure remote connections (e.g., telnet and rlogin)
or remote mail services should make it a practice to regularly change
their passwords. Once every three months is suggested. If possible
users should use secure connections, e.g. SSH (secure shell), etc.
Use of Silicon Graphics Visualization
Computer ("Nambe")
Nambe is a Silicon Graphics Onyx 2 purchased by the Visualization Group
at the AHPCC, and members of the Visualization Group therefore have
priority access to it. When not being used by the visualization group,
the primary use of the machine should be for running graphically intensive
applications, such as scientific visualization or computer-aided design
software.
Users should adhere to the following guidelines for using the machine
as a computational engine:
- Production jobs, i.e. longer than 5 minutes, should be run with
their priority reduced by 10 or more.
- No single job should be submitted for a run exceeding 8 hours, and
if possible run at night. Runs of longer length should only be started
after consulting system administrators.
- Avoid using more than 4 processors simultaneously for serial or
parallel calculations. This will leave sufficient capacity for people
running most graphical applications on the machine.
- Parallel jobs using shared memory parallelization should be properly
tested and benchmarked before being run in a production mode.
- During prime hours, users should not run jobs requiring more than
50% of system memory.
Note: It is frequently necessary to reserve the machine for
demonstration or visualization group use, sometimes on short notice.
- "Suitable notice" for a demonstration or other visualization
use is considered to be 24 hours. Notice should be given in the message
of the day (motd) at login. The hours for this use will be stated
clearly.
- If suitable notice is not possible, jobs may be terminated or suspended
without notice. Email notice will then be provided as to when suspended
jobs may be restarted.
Use of the Linux Cluster
The Linux cluster is located in the workshop area, and consists of
11 PC's running Linux. The primary purpose of the Linux cluster is as
an educational and research tool. In the first role, they operate as
terminals for workshops and classes. In the second role, they operate
as a cluster for parallel computing research and development. Use of
the Linux cluster for production computation is a secondary purpose.
During regular working hours, and perhaps a few hours on either side,
users should not use the Linux cluster for computations. An exception
to this may be possible during scheduled university holidays, but only
with the consent of the system administrators.
Use of other workstations
Other workstations, e.g. IBM workstations, HP workstations, and SGI
workstations, are very limited in number and should mainly be used for
code development and for running applications that are specific to those
machines. Users should not use them for large or long computations,
particularly during the day. Computations run at night should be run
at very low priority so that dialup users may access the machines.
Use of servers
Systems that are designated as file servers, web servers, and name
servers should never be used for doing computations. In general,
users should avoid using them at all. The only exception to the latter
rule is when you are moving a large file to or from the AHPCC file system,
or between partitions on the AHPCC file system. In this case, it is
probably advantageous, because of the reduced network traffic, to perform
this operation directly on the file server. Consult the AHPCC User's
Guide on the AHPCC web site for information about servers.
