[intrepid-notify] ALCF Weekly Updates - December 8

[ALCF User Services]

*** Maintenance Monday: December 12 ***
Systems will have regularly scheduled maintenance beginning 15:00 UTC on Monday, December 12. Maintenance is expected to end at 01:00 UTC December 13 for Surveyor and Gadzooks, and at 03:00 UTC December 13 for Intrepid, Challenger and Eureka. During maintenance, you will not have access to the login nodes and no jobs will run. We will send a message to the notify lists when maintenance has concluded. Please direct any questions to support at alcf.anl.gov. 

*** Intrepid and Challenger Users: /home Directories to be Read-Only ***
Effective January 9, 2012, we will mount Intrepid and Challenger /home directories as read-only on the I/O nodes. When you need to write, please do so only to intrepid-fs0 and intrepid-fs1. For details on ALCF data storage policies, visit: http://www.alcf.anl.gov/resource-guides/data-policy.

*** Change to Script Job Environment ***
Reminder: You no longer need to manually save your login environment prior to job submission (e.g. using dumpenv.sh or dumpenv.csh) on Intrepid, Challenger or Surveyor. We highly recommend you update your job submission scripts. For more information, please go to: https://www.alcf.anl.gov/faq-page/what-default-script-environment.

*** System and Support Availability During Holiday Lab Closure ***
Argonne will be closed from Friday, December 23, 2011, through Monday, January 2, 2012, and will reopen Tuesday, January 3, 2012. All ALCF systems will be online and accessible during the closure, but no support will be available. ALCF staff will monitor system status, but will make limited repairs during the closure. Non-critical tickets submitted during the closure will be addressed when the lab reopens. Please contact support at alcf.anl.gov with any questions or concerns. 

*** Small Challenger Jobs to Run on Sub-Partition ***
To improve the response time for smaller development jobs, we will remove one of the 512-node partitions on Challenger from scheduling after maintenance on December 19. The sub-partitions of it will be used to run smaller jobs. The other 512-node partition will still accept 512-node debug jobs. For scheduling policy information, visit: http://www.alcf.anl.gov/resource-guides/job-scheduling-policy.

*** Do You Have Multiple CRYPTOCARD Tokens? ***
Users with multiple CRYPTOCARD tokens: We will be deactivating all but your most recently used token. Multiple cards can make support events harder to debug and may increase security risks. Please note that CRYPTOCARD tokens are property of Argonne National Laboratory. Unused tokens should be returned to: ALCF Service Desk, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave., Bldg 240, 2-D-21, Argonne, Illinois 60439. If you have questions about this, please contact support at alcf.anl.gov. 

*** ALCC Users: Allocation Pullback Policy Deadline Approaching ***
ALCC users: Please note that unused hours in excess of 50% of your total allocation are subject to the pullback policy after seven months into your allocation cycle. For many ALCC projects, the end of January 2012 is the seven-month mark. For more information, please contact your Catalyst. To view the pullback policy online, please visit: http://www.alcf.anl.gov/resource-guides/pullback-policy.

*** Important Dates ***
Dec. 23, 2011 - Jan. 2, 2012: Argonne closed. Reopens January 3, 2012
Jan. 10: Applications due for DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowships: https://www.krellinst.org/doecsgf/application/
Jan. 23-26: Getting Started Workshop. Details coming next week. 
Jan. 26: Monthly User Call: http://www.alcf.anl.gov/events/alcf-user-call