Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Public Machines at SLAC

Unix at SLAC
Security
Updated: 05 November 2007

SCCS provides a number of UNIX machines for use by the SLAC Community. This page describes the machines that are available, how to select them, and their intended uses to help you select an appropriate one for your use.

The SLAC UNIX Compute Farm has machines for compute-intensive interactive work (e.g., compiling and linking C, C++, and FORTRAN code, interactive debugging, interactive data analysis), batch production jobs, and tape (currently STK silo, 8mm, 4mm, and DLT) access. For interactive work that is not compute-intensive, SLAC has a number of hosts for e-mail (e.g., pine), web browsing (e.g., firefox), reading netnews, general editing (e.g., emacs, vi, FrameMaker), and other "light weight" interactive work. Details are described in the table below.

All SLAC systems are for use only by authorized users for SLAC business. Violators are subject to criminal and civil penalties. All activities may be monitored and recorded and these records provided to law enforcement officials; by using these system you expressly consent to such monitoring.

Workstations

There are public workstations in the lobby of the Computer Building, currently Dell Windows machines with SSH clients and AFS clients installed, and there is a hub for plugging in your SCCS-registered DHCP-capable laptops.

Room 111 of the Computer Building is a training room with Dell Windows workstations that may be used when they are not scheduled for a class.

There are several Windows and Macintosh systems in the lobby of the Panofsky Auditorium, equipped with SSH clients. They are sometimes put away for special events, so they may not be available at all times.

Servers

Machine or
Pool Name		 # in
Pool		 Software Hardware Intended Use
flora-old 5 Solaris 9 Sun Fire V240
dual 1000MHz UltraSparc CPUs, 2048MB memory		 X applications and
light interactive work. 1,2
flora Solaris 10 Sun Fire V210
1000MHz UltraSparc CPU, 1024MB memory		 X applications and
light interactive work. 1,2
tersk-old 10 Solaris 8,
Sun Workshop 6 Update 1		 Sun Enterprise 420/Netra t 1405
four 450/440MHz UltraSparc CPUs, 4GB memory		 Interactive compute-
intensive work. 1,3
tersk Solaris 9,
Sun ONE Studio 7
tersk-new Solaris 10,
Sun ONE Studio 7
shire-old 3 Solaris 8,
Sun Workshop 6 Update 1		 Sun Enterprise 6800
multiple 750MHz UltraSparc CPUs, 16GB memory		 Interactive data analysis
work; BaBar priority.1,3,4
shire Solaris 10,
Sun ONE Studio 7
iris 3 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel) Sun Fire V20z
dual 1.8GHz Opteron CPUs, 2GB memory7		 Light interactive work. 1,2
rhel3-32, rhel3-32-test8
(aka noric, noric-test8)		 7 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel),
GCC 3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2		 Sun Fire V20z
dual 1.8GHz Opteron CPUs, 2GB memory7		 Interactive compute-
intensive work.1,3
sl3-32, sl3-32-test8
(aka yakut, yakut-test8)		 7 Scientific Linux 3 (32-bit kernel), GCC 3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2 Sun Fire V20z
dual 1.8GHz Opteron CPUs, 2GB memory7		 Building and testing BaBar code; BaBar priority.1,3,4
rhel4-32, rhel4-32-test8 4 RH Enterprise Linux 4 (32-bit kernel),
GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4		 Sun Fire X4100
dual dual-core 2.2GHz Opteron 275 CPUs, 4GB memory7		 Interactive compute-
intensive work.1,3
rhel4-64, rhel4-64-test8 4 RH Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit kernel),
GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4		 Sun Fire X4100
dual dual-core 2.2GHz Opteron 275 CPUs, 4GB memory7		 Interactive compute-
intensive work.1,3
sl4-32, sl4-32-test8 4 Scientific Linux 4 (32-bit kernel),
GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4		 Sun Fire X4100
dual dual-core 2.2GHz Opteron 275 CPUs, 4GB memory7		 Building and testing BaBar code; BaBar priority.1,3,4
suncron 1 Solaris 9 Sun Netra t1-105
440MHz UltraSparc CPU, 256MB memory		 Host for user cron jobs 2,6
lnxcron 1 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel) Dell 1650
dual 1.4GHz PIII CPUs, 2GB memory7		 Host for user cron jobs 2,6

Batch Workers

Pool Name # in
Pool		 Software Hardware Intended Use
don 256 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel), GCC 3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2 Sun Fire V20z
dual 1.8GHz Opteron 244 CPUs, 2GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4
cob 350 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel), GCC 3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2 Sun Fire V20z
dual dual-core 2.0GHz Opteron 270 CPUs, 4GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4
boer 78 RH Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit kernel), GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4 Sun Fire X2200M2
dual dual-core 2.6GHz Opteron 2218 CPUs, 8GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4,5
yili 156 RH Enterprise Linux 3 (32-bit kernel), GCC 3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2 Sun Fire X4100
dual dual-core 2.2GHz Opteron 275 CPUs, 4GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4,5
RH Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit kernel), GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4
bali 252 RH Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit kernel), GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4 Sun Fire X2200M2
dual dual-core 2.6GHz Opteron 2218 CPUs, 8GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4,5
fell 126 RH Enterprise Linux 4 (64-bit kernel), GCC 3.4.6, glibc-2.3.4 Dell Poweredge 1950
dual quad-core 2.66GHz Xeon CPUs, 16GB memory7		 Batch work only;
no logins.4,5

Notes:

  1. The flora, tersk, shire, iris and noric names (and variants, such as flora-old) will give you the least loaded machine from a pool of machines for logging in. (If these names do not work for you at your site, try e.g., flora.best.slac.stanford.edu.) Suffixes such as "-new" and "-old", e.g., flora-old, are used from time to time to identify pools of machines running software different from the version currently recommended by SCCS, e.g., for testing or for backwards compatibility. When a new or old version is not available, these hyphenated names will be synonyms for the corresponding base name for some period of time but then may be retired until a different version is available again.
  2. CPU usage on these interactive machines is limited to 20% of available CPU or less, measured on 15 minute intervals.
  3. These are part of the SLAC UNIX Compute Farm and are for interactive compute-intensive work only. As a rule of thumb, a process is deemed to be non-interactive if it consumes a significant fraction of a CPU continuously for more than 12 hours. Running CPU-intensive processes in the background or through non-interactive mechanisms such as trscron, especially several such processes at the same time (either on a single machine or on several machines within the pool), is also considered non-interactive use. Such work should be moved to batch or else it may be reniced to a poorer priority or even killed if regular abuse occurs, possibly with no notice. In addition, any process that seriously interferes with the usability of the machine in other ways, e.g., by filling up most of memory or /tmp space, may be killed with little or no notice.
  4. These are part of the SLAC UNIX Compute Farm. BaBar work has priority on a large subset of these machines. Other users may use them, but may be asked to stop if the resources are needed by BaBar. BaBar priorities will influence system availability and upgrade schedules.
  5. 32-bit or 64-bit machines may be specifically requested through the use of a batch resource. Otherwise a job will be dispatched on the next available worker.
  6. User cron jobs are only permitted on the cron servers, suncron and lnxcron, in order to avoid spikes of poor performance for interactive users on our other public machines.
  7. Memory use is limited to 50% of addressable memory by default, or a maximum of 80% with the use of the limit or ulimit shell command.
  8. Test machine. May be subject to configuration changes or reboots at short notice.

Owner: Boeheim