Accounts
Access to EMSL computing resources is granted when a proposal describing the research objectives is submitted and approved. Upon proposal approval, users may apply for UNIX accounts on the computers listed in the proposal form.
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Additional Information
If you already have an account, it may not be necessary to submit a second proposal unless your needs extend beyond the scope of the first one. See your point of contact for more details.
Getting an Account
If you have submitted a proposal and been notified of its approval or have an account on another one of the EMSL computers, then select a box from the matrix based on:
- Whether you are a PNNL employee (postdocs are nonemployees)
- Your citizenship
- Where you will be performing the research (at PNNL or elsewhere)
| Onsite | Offsite | |
|---|---|---|
| Employee, US Citizen | X | X |
| Employee, Non-US Citizen | X | X |
| Non-Employee, US Citizen | X | X |
| Non-Employee, Non-US Citizen | X | X |
Logging In
Information for first-time users logging into EMSL environments follows.
- New User Login Procedures for Chinook - What to do after getting your password
- Changing Your password - Your password to the EMSL computers should be changed the first time you log in (see New User Login Procedures) and periodically thereafter.
- Home, Your Path, and Environmental Variables - Suggestions for your .login and .cshrc files
Managing Allocation Accounts
EMSL supercomputer users receive an allocation of time to run batch jobs. If you have special requirements that cannot be met by running in the batch environment, send an e-mail to mscf-consulting@pnl.gov for other options. Additional information follows regarding supercomputer usage. This information does not apply to the other EMSL computing resources (e.g., workstations and PCs).
- Instructions and Guidelines — on using and checking allocation balance and status
- Job Policies — for submitting jobs
- GOLD (the CPU Allocations Bank) — details about the commands available to users to query balances and transactions
- Getting a Refund — if your job fails, it may be possible for you to receive a refund. This link is a MUST READ
User Policies for Computer Resources
- Any use of the EMSL computing resources 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 Chinook directories. After an additional 30 days, their Chinook 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 on userhold for more than 12 hours will be deleted.
- Running multiple simultaneous jobs requiring fewer nodes 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
Lack-of-Use policy
- To insure the efficient use of computing resources, EMSL 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.
