DAILY BULLETIN

July 18, 2008

Issued at 0900

Calendar of Events

(Details follow)

What When Summary
No New Articles 07/18/08 See Details Below
Fileserver Files Move 07/14/08 See Details Below
LSF Manuals Available 07/10/08 See Details Below
Bluefire File Transfer 07/08/08 See Details Below
Bluefire Charging Error 07/08/08 See Details Below
Lightning Usage Light 07/02/08 See Details Below
Bluefire GAU Reporting 07/02/08 See Details Below
Mass Store Downtime Every Sunday 0000-0300 Weekly Backup
Bluevista Maintenance 07/08/08 0600-1300 Monthly
Lightning Maintenance 07/15/08 0600-1800 Monthly
Pegasus Maintenance 07/22/08 0600-1800 Monthly

** TODAY'S NEWS **

No New Articles

Friday 07/18/08

Fileserver Filesystems Move

Monday 07/14/08

On Wednesday, July 16 at 12:00 the fileserver filesystems listed below will go to read-only status on the date above. Users who plan to continue to use these filesystems, must provide a list of filesystem(s), fully-qualified name(s) of machines to which they are to be exported, and required protocol (CIFS or NFS) via Extraview (https://cislcustomersupport.ucar.edu/evj/ExtraView), so that arrangements can be made for the Network Appliance system to host them. Filesystems not claimed will disappear in about 3 months, or when the failing raid goes offline. Only the file systems listed in this notice will be moved at this time.

/fs/projects/gtp

/fs/projects/mss

/fs/projects/nets

/fs/projects/coll

/fs/projects/hps

/fs/projects/tgcm

/fs/projects/dsg

/fs/contrib

/fs/scd/home3

/fs/mmm/projects/mesouser

/fs/mmm/projects/wrfhelp

/fs/scd/home2

LSF Manuals Available on Web

Thursday 07/10/08

This website contains a full set of manuals and a search engine for LSF version 7.0.3

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/LSF/7.0.3/

The following sub-links may be of particular interest to our users:

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/LSF/7.0.3/command_reference/index.html

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/LSF/7.0.3/lsf_using/lsf_usingTOC.html

File Transfer on Bluefire

Tuesday 07/08/08

An ssh-key-based utility is now in place to allow you to transfer files to/from bluefire without needing to place them in an intermediate location or type in your CryptoCard password for each transfer.

The method requires that you install your public key; instructions are given in the bluefire quickstart guide at

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/bluefire/be_quickstart.html#transfer

Charges for Bluefire Under Reported

Tuesday 07/08/08

GAU's calculated for non-shared jobs run prior to July 7 were charged less than they should have been. The LSF system incorrectly reported on bluefire a single processor per node instead of 32 processors per node. In the formula below the "number of processors in that node" was one prior to July 7, and will be 32 starting with reporting for July 7.

For non-shared jobs: GAUs charged = wallclock hours used * number of nodes used * number of processors in that node * computer factor * queue charging factor

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

Lightning is Lightly Loaded

Wednesday 07/02/08

These are weeks of big changes at NCAR! Blueice has been decommissioned whereas Bluevista and Lightning will be decommissioned at the end of September.

Currently the queues on Bluevista are pretty busy, whereas Lightning is pretty idle, so we encourage users to take advantage of it.

Lightning is a Linux machine, with 128 2-way nodes (256 Opteron processors with a 2.2-GHz clock cycle total) and 4 GB memory per node.

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/lightning/overview.jsp

CISL Portal Bluefire GAU reporting

Wednesday 07/02/08

The new security approach for Bluefire logins requires that we enhance the CISL Portal to support One-Time Password (OTP) authentication. We are a few weeks away from completing that work and once finished, you will see a Bluefire tab added to your Portal pages to show active job queues and GAU reports.

In the meantime, please refer to our batch reports on the Database Services Team website.

DBST reports:

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/dbst/reports.shtml

CISL Portal:

https://portal.scd.ucar.edu:8443/scd-portal/

** RECENT NEWS **

Stage 2 Nodes on Bluefire are Available

Monday 06/30/08

All 117 nodes of bluefire are available to the CISL user community.

Divisions and CSL projects are encouraged to use lower priority queues on bluefire, such as economy and stand-by, since monthly allocations will not be increased until December 1. A number of special projects including the Accelerated Scientific Discovery projects will be receiving large allocations between now and December. However, the general user community is encouraged to take advantage of any additional computer time available by using their allocations more slowly (using economy and stand-by). For information on allocations please contact Ginger Caldwell, cal@ucar.edu .

How to Access Bluefire

Friday 06/20/08

Log in to bluefire, type

ssh -X bluefire.ucar.edu

or

ssh -X -l your_bluefire_login@bluefire.ucar.edu

if your login on bluefire is different from your local system.

(Mac users may need to use the -Y option with ssh.) You will be prompted for your one-time password; use your Cryptocard to obtain it.

Note: The roy gateway computer is NOT used for accessing bluefire.

** SUBSCRIPTION INFO **

The Daily Bulletin is published by the Computational and Informational Systems Laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. For more information about Daily Bulletin items, send e-mail to consult1@ucar.edu or call 303-497-1278.

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For additional CISL documentation, see:

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/docs/catalog