Electronic consulting: software tools to enhance consulting at the San Diego Supercomputer Center

This paper describessomeof the software fools and methods usedat the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) to help usersaccomplish their computatwnal sciencetaskson the center’s CRAY Y-MP8/864 supercompufer, which runs under LRWCOS,Cray Research’sversion of UNIX. Thesesoftware toolsare of two main classes:fools usedby the users themselvesand fools usedby the SDSC user consulting stafi to assist users.The former includes the UNIX manual pagesystem, SDSC’Sonline document program called dot, the news utility, electronic mail, SDSC’Sgive, givedti, takedti, j7r, and error utilities, and SDSC’S CPUtime quota system utilities (reslisf, r~alloc, and acctrep). The btfer class includes software and methodstoaccessinformation on .dkfchogs,.system call hogs,.held jobs (CPU-time quota system), Network Queuing System entries, archived e-mail, software-wn@ratwn management,and softwarerequesfsmanagement, University of California, and over 40 industrial partners. Most researchers connect to SDSC via NSFNET, which provides high-speed access among the National Science Foundation supercomputer centers, mid-level regional networks, and other research-center networks such as SPAN/HEPnet, ESnet, and CSUnet. SDSC researchers have widely varied computing experiences and are pursuing projects as diverse as global-climate-change modeling, rational drug design, elucidation of hightemperature superconductivity, seismic analysis of structures, and quantitative genetics of natural plant populations. One of SDSC’s most important tasks is to help these researchers make effective use of the center’s C1’WY Y-MP8/864 supercomputer, which runs under UNICOS, Cray Researches UNIX operating system. The SDSC CRAY is used heavily. Every month about 120 new users are given logins and about 1,100 people use some time on it. Typically there are 60 to 110 active login sessions during the day. There is almost never any idle time due to lack of user load. To assist with training these users, the center’s staff offers a three-day training program, encourages the use of its extensive documentation Permission to copy without feeall or part of this material is granted provided that the copiesare not madeor . distributed for direct commercial advantage, theACM copyright noticeand the title of fhepublicafwn and ifs date appear,and notice is given that cop@ngis by permission of the Associafwn of Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a feeand/or spec$$cpermission. Copyright 1991 ACM 0-89791-454-6/91/0010/036;7...$1.50 set, and makes available many self-help software tools. In addition, there are software tools for the consulting staff to use to help the users. These toolsets include existing UNIX/UNiCOS tools, tools from other sources ported to the CRAY, and new tools developed by the SDSC programming staff. The following sections discuss these toolsets and how they are used in the SDSC consulting environment. User self-help tools All new users receive a hardcopy of the SDSC User Guide, a 280-page introduction to most aspects of using the SDSC CRAY. The guide introduces the SDSC documentation, its newsletter, and the online information sources. This guide informs most users well enough to give them a good start ineffectively using the CRAY, and it also prepares them to help themselves by explaining how to use several software tools.