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ProPack4 FriendlyUser

To NCSA SGI Altix (cobalt) Users:
---------------------------------

NCSA is in the final stages of upgrading the operating system for its
SGI Altix (cobalt) system from SGI ProPack 3 to ProPack 4. Starting
approximately 10 pm (CT) Tuesday August 15, we will be making a portion
of cobalt's resources available under ProPack 4 in friendly-user mode
for a period of two weeks. No service units will be charged for these
friendly-user jobs. We encourage you to test your codes under ProPack 4
to ensure that they work with the new operating system. Propack 3 will
be phased out on cobalt at the end of August.

To submit a "friendly user" job to ProPack 4, log in to

        co-login2.ncsa.uiuc.edu

and submit jobs from there. (Jobs submitted from co-login1.ncsa.uiuc.edu
will run in the regular production queues as usual.)

Note: Due to memory constraints, large memory jobs submitted to the
production queues under ProPack 3 will be rejected. Please submit
these jobs to ProPack 4 as described above.

ProPack 3 vs ProPack 4
----------------------
SGI ProPack 3 was based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 3
which uses the Linux 2.4 kernel. ProPack 4 is based on SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server 9 (SLES9) which uses the Linux 2.6 kernel. Here is
a brief summary of the differences:

                         ProPack 3       ProPack 4
                         ---------       ---------
      Distribution       RedHat          SLES9
      Linux Kernel       2.4.21          2.6.5
      glibc              2.3.2-95        2.3.3-98
      batch system       pbs-5.4.1       pbs-7.1.1


User Impact
-----------
In general, programs built on ProPack 3 should run without problems
on ProPack 4. Please let us know if you have to recompile your
program to get it to work with ProPack 4.

On ProPack 3, batch jobs could use memory associated with processors
that were assigned to other jobs. Starting with ProPack 4, jobs are
limited to the memory associated with the processors assigned to the
job. If the job requires more memory that is available, it will be
killed by the system.

If you need to use old Linux pthreads with ProPack 4, set the
following:

         setenv LD_ASSUME_KERNEL 2.4.21


Please help us ensure that ProPack 4 is ready for production by
reporting any problems or issues to the NCSA Consulting Office via
electronic mail at consult@ncsa.uiuc.edu or by telephone at (217)
244-1144.
SGI Altix 3700:usr/news/ProPack4_FriendlyUser
Last Modified: August 14, 2006