Bulletin 114 - 2004 May 14

1. Close of service on the SX-5s, florey and russell
2. Seminar on Intel processors
3. Old versions of SX compilers
4. Job status on the SX-6/TX7 system
5. Altix/cherax batch system problems
6. .forward files
7. Gale NFS Filesystems

The HPCCC plans to close the SX-5 systems, florey and russell, to general user service on

Monday 17th May at 4 pm.

The systems will be kept live for a further two weeks for Operational requirements, and for forgotten items.

The firm schedule is for the SX-5 systems to be turned off on

Monday 31st May at 4 pm.

and then de-commissioned.

SGI, together with Intel will be giving a technology roadmap update on Friday 28 May, 9:30am-11am in Melbourne at the HPCCC, 150 Lonsdale St.

The presentation will be open to CSIRO and Bureau staff.

Please indicate your interest in attending to erika.stojanovic@csiro.au or 03 9669 8113 by Friday, 21 May so that an appropriate sized venue can be booked.

Users should be using the default and latest (release 285) version of the NEC Fortran compiler.

Older versions for the compilers, as used on the SX-5s, will continue to be kept for some time, in case problems are encountered with the newest version.

Users can access different versions width the sxcross command, e.g.

 sxcross  sxf90/rev253

but older versions should be used only when you cannot progress otherwise.

We have had several instances when the output from qstat or qstato commands show a job status of EXT for long periods.

This means that the jobs are exiting, but if the condition persists, then NQSII is having problems with finishing the job.

Some of the reasons so far encountered are:

• unable to return output files because the target machine is down
• unable to return output files because the network is down
• unable to return output files because the target machine is not visible from the SX-6/TX7 system.
• unable to return output files because the permissions do not allow access on the output directory
• unable to return output files because the output file destination is an existing directory rather than a file.

Following the upgrade of cherax from 8 to 16 CPUs on Monday, the batch system failed to work because of licensing issues.

We have temporarily disabled the extra processors to enable the batch system to work again.

We are actively seeking a better batch system for cherax.

With the demise of the SX-5s, some e-mail lists are being moved to other machines.

However, please ensure that you have a .forward file on your $HOME file system on the SX-6/TX7 system, containing a valid e-mail forwarding address, so that system e-mail can be delivered to you.

Gale NFS mounts on Russell and Florey will be unmounted at 4pm Monday, 17th May 2004. Gale will move to the Docklands on the 18th of May 2004.