NCSA TeraGrid: Allocations and Account Management

The Allocation Process
Access

Standard Password
X.509 Certificate

Managing your Account

Changing Your Password
Your shell
Email

Managing your Allocation

Charging Algorithm
Checking Your Account Balance

1. The Allocation Process

Allocations on the TeraGrid systems are available to eligible principal investigators through a peer-review process. See the document Access to the TeraGrid for details.

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 the NCSA TeraGrid cluster. If you are a new NCSA user, use the default password to log in. You should change your password the first time you log in and periodically thereafter.

2.1 Standard Password

In order to properly authenticate to the NCSA TeraGrid cluster, you need a version of SSH that has the "keyboard-interactive" authentication mechanism (most newer versions support this). Windows users should set up a profile for the cluster, and then edit the authentication mechanisms. Add keyboard-interactive so that it is the first authentication mechanism.

   % ssh tg-login.ncsa.teragrid.org

Note: If you have a different username on the remote machine, you'll need to specify it on the command line:

   % ssh jdoe@tg-login.ncsa.teragrid.org

2.2 X.509 Certificate

You can also use X.509 certificates to authenticate to the TeraGrid. First you'll need to get an accepted user certificate and get added to the grid-mapfile. See Access to the TeraGrid: Authentication for information. Then you can use GSI-Enabled OpenSSH (gsissh) to log onto the access node:

   % gsissh tg-login.ncsa.teragrid.org

Note: Because you are using your certificate for authentication, you shouldn't have to enter a password and you don't have to specify your remote username even if it is different.

Note: When using GSI-Enabled OpenSSH to connect to the NCSA TeraGrid cluster, if you want to do anything Kerberos-oriented, such as changing your password or Kerberos ftp, you'll need to run kinit first.

3. Managing your Account

3.1 Changing Your Password

NCSA requires passwords to be changed via a secure web page.

3.2 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 the NCSA TeraGrid cluster is the GNU Bourne-Again SHell (bash), which is completely compatible with the Bourne shell (sh).

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

3.3 Email

Email services are not supported on the NCSA TeraGrid system. Outbound email will be delivered, but replies to these emails will bounce.

In cases where NCSA TeraGrid staff need to contact you, they will send email to your NCSA account. So it is important that you forward your NCSA email.

Use the same login and password as when connecting to the NCSA TeraGrid cluster. At this time, grid services are not running on these machines, so you will need to know your login and password.

To forward your NCSA email, log onto one of the public email machines:

public-linux.ncsa.uiuc.edu
public-sun.ncsa.uiuc.edu

Use the same login and password as when connecting to the NCSA TeraGrid cluster. At this time, grid services are not running on these machines, so you will need to know your login and password.

create a file /var/forward/$USER/.forward with your favorite editor which contains a single line with your forwarding address.
chmod 644 /var/forward/$USER/.forward

Note: Creating a .forward file in your account on the NCSA TeraGrid cluster does not work. You must create it as described above on the public email machines.

4. Managing your Allocation

4.1 Charging Algorithm

The Service Units (SUs) charged for a job is based on the number of nodes used and the wall clock time.

#SUs = 2 * #Nodes * Wall_Time * NormFactor

where

#SUs = the number of service units charged for the job
Wall_Time = Total wall clock hours used by the job
NormFactor = 1    for the 1.3 GHz processor machines
             1.15 for the 1.5 GHz processor machines

4.2 Checking Your Account Balance

On the Command Line

For TeraGrid users, you can monitor usage of your allocation by using the TeraGrid 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 displays cumulative usage information of all your TeraGrid allocations(projects) on the local NCSA machine. If you are the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project, tgusage will return a list of all users in the project along with their usage. If you are a user in the project, tgusage will return your specific usage.

Specify the --account option for information about a specific project. The usage shown is the individual user's SU usage and total SU usage for all users in the project.

For a complete description of the tgusage options, enter tgusage --help.

Online Usage Information

Usage information can also be obtained online through the TeraGrid User Portal.

login to the User Portal
click on the "My TeraGrid" tab
you should be on the "Accounts and Usage" page (default), if not click that link under the "My TeraGrid" tab.

NCSA's usage command

Note: Starting Monday February 4 2008, the NCSA "usage" command will no longer provide TeraGrid allocation and usage information.

NCSA local and Private Sector Partner (PSP) 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
aad    abe   lahti 91.03  Active   100000   713.72  06/30/08  Lahti, Tracy
non  cobalt  lahti  0.02  Active    50000    94.93  12/31/08  Lahti, Tracy

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.

NCSA NEWS

Allocations and Account Management

On the Command Line

Online Usage Information

NCSA's usage command