NCSA HPC Account Management

Managing your Account

Passwords
Your shell
Managing your "dot" files
Forwarding your mail

Managing your Allocation

Adding/removing users
Charging Algorithms
Verifying Your Account Balance
Setting Projects for Charging
Refunds
Account Termination, Renewals, and Extensions

1. Managing your Account

1.1 Passwords

XSEDE users are provided access to NCSA XSEDE Resources via the XSEDE User Portal (XUP). Your Allocation Information Packet contains your XUP username and password that you will need to access the XSEDE User Portal. As an alternative to using the XUP, XSEDE users can request a Site Specific Password to access NCSA XSEDE Resources via your own locally installed client.

If you are a user on a NCSA local project (non XSEDE), a default password is sent to you as part of the new user packet you receive via postal mail after your account is created.

It is important that you keep the new user packet information that contains your default password in a secure place for your reference. You will have the same default password on all NCSA systems. If you already are a user on NCSA HPC systems, use your current password to log in to a new NCSA HPC system. Visit this secure web page to change your password from the default within two weeks.

NCSA requires you to change your password at least once a year. You will be notified via email that your password is going to expire at 30, 14, 7, 3, and 1 days before it expires. Once a password has expired, the only way to get it reset is to contact the NCSA Helpdesk. If you change your password more frequently than once a year, you should never be notified.

Never share your password with another user or make your password known to anyone else.

Changing your NCSA password

You can change your password via this secure web page.

NCSA offers a webpage with tips on selecting good passwords that you should consider when you change your password.

What if I have forgotten my NCSA password?

You may contact the NCSA Helpdesk and request that your password be reset to the default. If you do not have your default password form, you will need to contact NCSA Allocations to get a replacement.

Note: XSEDE provides online password management where XSEDE users can change their current XUP password or reset a forgotten XUP password.

1.2 Your shell

When your account is first activated your default shell is set to tcsh, an enhanced version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell (csh). The tcsh shell is completely compatible with the standard csh, and all csh commands and scripts work unedited with tcsh. Enter "man tcsh" at the prompt for details about tcsh.

The other shell available on NCSA HPC systems is the GNU Bourne-Again SHell (bash), which is completely compatible with the Bourne shell (sh).

To change your shell, send email to NCSA Helpdesk with a request.

1.3 Managing your "dot" files

When your account on an NCSA system is created, default "dot" files are placed in your home directory.

NCSA HPC systems use the module system to set uo the user environment. See the section Managing Your Environment (Modules) for details.

For other "dot" files, you can find copies of the default files in /etc/skel. Copy the appropriate file to your home directory and customize as needed.

1.4 Forwarding your mail

No email services are supported on NCSA HPC systems. All mail is automatically routed to NCSA Email systems. You will be prompted to enter a forwarding e-mail address the first time you log in. Note that NCSA staff do not need to set up mail forwarding.

You will be asked to verify your forwarding email address every six months.

To change your forwarding email address:
Edit /var/forward/$USER/.forward -- it should contain one line which is the email address to which mail shall be forwarded.

2. Managing your Allocation

2.1 Adding/removing users

After your request for an allocation on an NCSA HPC system has been granted and your account has been activated, you may request to add users to your allocation if you are a Principal Investigator (PI) on an account. From time to time as the people working on your project change, you might need to remove a user from your allocation. The XSEDE User Portal has an online form for adding and removing users from your project.

2.2 Charging Algorithms

Once you have an allocation, you will be charged for the amount of service units (SUs) used. SUs for the NCSA HPC systems are calculated based on wall clock time of jobs.

Dell NVIDIA Cluster (Forge)

SUs are based on the number of nodes used and the wall clock time.

# SUs = 16 * #Nodes * Wall_Time

        where:

        Wall_Time = Total Wall Clock Hours

Note: The minimum resource allocation for a batch job is 1 node.

2.3 Verifying Your Account Balance

On the Command Line

XSEDE users can monitor usage of your allocation by using the tgusage utility. The data displayed by tgusage is normally updated once each day, so SUs accrued by jobs on a given day will be reflected in tgusage the next day.

Entering tgusage with no options or -h/--help displays the usage/help information. There are three basic reports of usage that can be generated with the tgusage command.

1. Cumulative usage information of all your XSEDE allocations(projects)
2. Cumulative usage information for all users of a single project that you are a member of.
3. User usage information for a single project for a single day or usage between a range of dates.

Cumulative usage information of all your XSEDE allocations(projects).

Users can track their project usage or determine how many SUs are available within the project with the "tgusage" command and -u flag.

[forge: ~]$ tgusage -u dbane

Account: TG-STH075020J
Resource: forge.ncsa.teragrid
Allocation Period: 2011-10-01 to 2012-09-30

Name (Last First) or Account       Total      Remaining        Usage
----------------------------     ----------  ------------   ----------
    Bane Dessel                   100000 SU     66348 SU        41 SU

...

Account: TG-STH075020J
Resource: mss.ncsa.teragrid
Allocation Period: 2011-10-01 to 2012-09-30

Name (Last First) or Account       Total      Remaining        Usage
----------------------------     ----------  ------------   ---------- 
    Bane Dessel                     10 SU        10 SU         0 SU

Cumulative usage information for all users of a single project that you are a member of.

Specifying the TG Account/Project ID will list all the members of the TG Account/Project, the project total allocated SUs, remaining SU and each user's total usage charges on the specified on TG Account/Project.

[forge: ~]$ tgusage -a TG-STH075020J

Account: TG-STH075020J
Resource: forge.ncsa.teragrid
Allocation Period: 2011-10-01 to 2012-09-30

Name (Last First) or Account       Total      Remaining        Usage
----------------------------     ----------  ------------   ----------
    Bane Dessel                   100000 SU     66348 SU        41 SU
    Congus Abel                   100000 SU     66348 SU         0 SU
    Dakhan Kirk                   100000 SU     66348 SU         0 SU
    Kressh Rhelg                  100000 SU     66348 SU         0 SU
	...
    Maul Viktor                   100000 SU     66348 SU      2392 SU
    Plagueis Muun                 100000 SU     66348 SU         0 SU
 PI Sidious Palpatine             100000 SU     66348 SU        66 SU
    Tyranus Dooku                 100000 SU     66348 SU      5889 SU
    Vader Anakin                  100000 SU     66348 SU     26125 SU

...

Account: TG-STH075020J
Resource: mss.ncsa.teragrid
Allocation Period: 2011-10-01 to 2012-09-30

Name (Last First) or Account       Total      Remaining        Usage
----------------------------     ----------  ------------   ---------- 
    Bane Dessel                     10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Congus Abel                     10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Dakhan Kirk                     10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Kressh Rhelg                    10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
	...
    Maul Viktor                     10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Plagueis Muun                   10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
 PI Sidious Palpatine               10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Tyranus Dooku                   10 SU         10 SU        0 SU
    Vader Anakin                    10 SU         10 SU        0 SU

Specific day/date range user usage information

Users can review their usage for a specific day or between a specific date range, by specifying the "-j" flag and including the "-u", "-a", "--begindate" and "--enddate" flags.

Note: All the flags must be used together to generate the report similar to the one listed below.

[forge: ~]$ tgusage -j -u vmaul -a TG-STH075020J --begindate=10-01-2011 --enddate=10-16-2011

 
 FORGE.NCSA.TERAGRID
 Charge Number   Wall     SUs     Nodes   Procs       Queue          Start Time                End Time
--------------  ------    ----    -----   ------      ------    ----------------------  ----------------------
 TG-STH075020J  0.01      0         1                 normal    2011-10-15 12:44:52-08  2011-10-15 12:45:27-08
 TG-STH075020J  9.90      238       3                 normal    2011-10-01 15:22:48-08  2011-10-02 01:17:07-08

 SubTotal
 --------
 Jobs:  2     wall_hours: 9.91       charges:   238

 GrandTotal
 ==========
 Jobs:  2     wall_hours: 9.91       charges:   238

The resource names relating to NCSA systems are as follows:

Resource Name	System
forge.ncsa.teragrid	Dell NVIDIA Cluster (forge)
mss.ncsa.teragrid	Mass Storage System

Online Usage Information

Usage information can also be obtained online through the XSEDE User Portal on the "Allocations/Usage" page under the "MY XSEDE" tab.

NCSA's usage command

NCSA local users should use usage to monitor usage of your allocation.

Entering usage with no options displays cumulative information about the usage of all your allocations on all applicable NCSA machines. For example:

% usage
Proj   Mach    Login    Usage  Status  P_alloc  P_usage  P_expire  Name
jed     forge  mowjinn   2.60  Active    50000   213.13  09/30/12  Jinn, Mace
jdi ncsa_tape  mowjinn   0.00  Active        5     0.00  09/30/12  Jinn, Mace

If the project name is specified using the -p option, information is returned for all users of that project on all applicable machines. The data displayed by usage is normally updated once each day, so SUs accrued by jobs on a given day will be reflected in usage the next day.

For a more complete description of the usage options, enter man usage.

2.4 Setting Projects for Charging

If you have more than one project (PSN), you can charge to various projects within a logon session. Most users have only one project. You do not need to define a default project unless you have multiple projects.

Setting a Default Project

You can define (or change) a default project with the 'defacct' command. After a default project is set, you will no longer be prompted to choose one of your projects during the login process.
Enter 'defacct' at the prompt to set your default.

Enter 'none' at the prompt to unset a default project, and enter a carriage return to leave your default project unchanged.
See the defacct man page for more information.
The 'batch_accts' command lists all your accounts on the current system.
IMPORTANT: If you have a default project set, batch jobs will automatically be charged to the default project at the time that the job is submitted unless you charge the batch job to a specific project (see below).
Charging to Projects in a Batch Job

You can also charge batch jobs to a specific project (PSN) with the -A option in the PBS qsub command.

2.5 Refunds

NCSA considers a request for a refund for service units when one of the following is true:

output was lost because of a system crash or hardware failure
a bug in system software caused incorrect output
NCSA staff gave misleading advice, causing incorrect output

Refund requests are denied when one of the following is true:

fewer than 100 SUs were consumed (academic users)
the request was made more than two weeks after the charge
no charges were recorded for the job in question (e.g., the system crashed before a job finished so the CPU usage was not recorded in the accounting file)
output was lost because the job did not use the batch scratch file system

Submit the following information to NCSA Consulting Services to request a refund:

user ID
machine name
Batch Job ID
reason for the request
date the job finished

The list above shows the minimum information required. Additional information that may be requested includes error messages or a copy of your batch script. In such cases, you will be contacted by a member of the consulting staff who will let you know what additional information is needed to review your request.

2.6 Account Termination, Renewals, and Extensions

Account Termination

Academic accounts on NCSA Production machines are deleted when they either use up the allocation or reach the expiry date on the project, whichever comes first. See the section Verifying Your Account Balance for information on your allocation. The Principal Investigator of a project is notified automatically via email when

80% of allocation is used
90% of allocation is used
3 months to expiration of the project
1 month to expiration of the project

Note that industrial user accounts do not expire automatically.

Users have restricted access to their account for a one week period after the account is terminated. You cannot login, but have ftp access via a gridftp client to retrieve home directory files, etc... if you haven't already done so. For information on installing gridftp clients, please see Connecting to NCSA Systems.

Users' MSS accounts are active for a period of 4 months in read-only mode after your last NCSA production machine account is deleted. This means that you can retrieve already existing files from MSS, but cannot save any new files. You can use an SSH based client, or a gridftp client to access MSS. See here for details.

Project Renewals and Extensions

If you have an existing Startup or Research allocation, you can have the expiration dates extended. This is requesting that the expiration date be moved. It is not a request for more service units. To request an extension, submit the Extension Request Form available at the Partnerships Online Proposal System (POPS) page (access via the XSEDE Portal). Please make the request at least two weeks prior to the project deactivation date. Your request will be reviewed prior to deactivation, and you will be contacted via electronic mail with the extension decision.