User Policies

Policies for Using Computer Resources

• Any use of the computing resources of the MSCF must be properly acknowledged.
• The /home directory is a shared resource without enforced quotas. When excessive amounts of disk space is used, those who are using the most space will be asked to reduce their use to some value. Repeated excessive use of disk space can lead to loss of system privileges. This directory is not a permanent storage system. Files to be saved should be stored on your local machine or on the NWfs file storage system.
• Repeated excessive use of disk space for more than 2 weeks can lead to loss of system privileges until disk usage has been reduced.
• Jobs running from the /home file system causing system degradation either because too many files are being accessed or there is a likelihood of exceeding disk capacity, will be terminated by the system administrator and the user will be sent an e-mail message. Such jobs should be run from /dtemp or the local /scratch files.
• The /dtemp file system should not be used to store important data. It is a temporary file system and is not backed up. Files will be removed after 60 days to maintain optimal performance.
• When a production run is found running on a login node instead of in the batch queue, the job will be terminated by the system administrator and the user will be sent an e-mail message. Such jobs cause unnecessary degradation of login node performance.
• Users who no longer have active project accounts will be notified that their accounts will be closed, and given 30 days to save their files from MPP2 directories. After an additional 30 days, their MPP2 accounts will be closed, and the account's home directory deleted unless they become participants on an active project account.
• Jobs in the batch queue that have been suspended for more than 12 hours will be deleted.
• Running multiple simultaneous jobs requiring fewer processors than required for the Large Job queue for the purpose of getting into the Large Job queue or more than the usual maximum of three jobs, is not allowed. Such jobs will be killed at the discretion of the System Operator and could lead to having the user's account deactivated.
• The longest time a single job can run is 48 hours. For further details, see Job Policies.

MSCF Lack-of-Use policy

• To insure the efficient use of our computing resources the MSCF management will be monitoring all computer project accounts every month. Any projects that have had no usage (computer time used) for two months will be notified for lack-of-use. Only the project's principle investigator will receive this message. Upon receipt of this first message the project PI will have to provide a justification as to why the project should continue to be supported by the MSCF. If no justification is received within a month, and a second lack-of-use notice is sent, the project allocation will be withdrawn and all account access will be terminated for that specific project. This will allow us to reallocate these hours to other projects waiting to be funded. This policy started on January 1, 2004.