CSC Network Rules
CSC Group Network Rules
Use of the CSC group network is subject to the rules laid down by the University Information Technology Syndicate, particularly those concerning use of Internet and network resources, as well as some rules specific to the Department of Physics and to CSC. You should have signed a copy of these and returned them to the group administrator on arrival. You can also download a copy here.
The network is administered by Philip Blakely (pmb39) and Stephen Millmore (stm31). If you need programs installing, or your computer is (apparently) broken, then either of them will be able to help.
Within the CSC network, the following rules apply: You will be given a username (usually the same as your CRSid) and a password. The password should consist of letters, numbers, and punctuation, and be at least 8 characters long. The password should not be divulged to anyone, not even a systems administrator.
Use of the Internet via our network is subject to the rules laid down by the Computing Service: Network rules.
Compute-time sharing
The various machines on the CSC Network are designated for particular groups, and only certain people can access machines for their group. Beyond this, please do not hog the machines, and be aware that other people may wish to use them.
Advice for MPhil students
The machines cerberus1-3 and lovelace are designated for MPhil students and should be used by them only.
- Please be aware that other students on the course need to use these machines; some negotiation may be necessary.
- Please do not leave excessively long simulations running; your current written assignments should not require vast amounts of computing power.
- If you abort a simulation, please check via 'top' that all its sub-processes have stopped, and use 'kill' to kill orphaned processes.
Advice for PhD students and Post-docs
- If you have finished your MPhil, then please make use of other machines (not cerberus or lovelace) for your simulations.
- LSC-group members: Please make use of other machines on the LSC network.
- FAST-group members: Please use your fast-pc-* machines.
- Members of other research groups, or with supervisors outside of the above groups: Please approach your group's computing support team or your supervisor, and ask where you can find sufficient computing power for your needs.
Systems and their current usage
The full list of systems on the CSC network is at: systems
.Recent usage statistics for CPU/GPU for all machines are available: CPU and GPU
The use of these machines is not regulated via a queueing or time-sharing system. However, if it becomes clear that people are not sharing the computers appropriately, I may need to implement technical/automatic solutions to prevent people from over-using the servers.
Scheduling commands
The following may be useful:
- The "at" command can be used to run commands at specific times.
- The "loadav" command gives an indication of the current usage of the machine. (You may therefore be able to write a Bash script that only starts running a simulation when a machine is relatively free.)