Topic: Ease of Use
Date Received: June 10, 2006

  1. Standardizing the queue names; easy access to queue limits at a central location.
  2. Standard ways to access usage / allocation info.
  3. Standard policies on home and scratch and ways to access this info.
  4. Kerberos autologout consistancy (and even better, longer ticket validity).

BC Team Feedback
Reply Date:
March 19, 2007

Standardizing Queue Names/ Easy Access to Queue Limits - The BC policy Common Queue Names (FY05-05) establishes a core set of batch queues with the same names at each of the participating sites. The queue names were chosen to align with HPCMP's Priority Classes and the Challenge usage type. Presently, the BC policy FY05-05 does not offer any mechanism for easy access to queue limits. However, the BC Team fully concurs with you that posting each center's queue limits in an easy to access location will be very beneficial to the DoD HPCMP user community. The BC Team plans to pursue a number of alternatives, and will incorporate the "easy access to queue limits" capability in an existing or future BC policy once the team has agreed on the most convenient method.

Standard Ways to Access Usage/ Allocation Info - The BC Team has already established a common command called show_usage (BC policy FY10-06) to provide users a report on the allocation and usage status of all pertinent subprojects. Also, the command show_usage offers the option -s to provide users with allocation and usage information on each subproject for all systems on which they have an account at the local center. The BC policy FY10-06 includes examples of reports generated by both show_usage and show_usage -s commands.

Standard Policies on Home and Scratch and Ways to Access Info - The BC Team has established an environment variable $WORKDIR (BC policy FY05-02 entitled "Minimum Scratch Space Retention Time") that points to an individual user's directory on the local temporary file system. For more information on $WORKDIR environment variable and $WORKDIR maintenance, please refer to the BC policy FY05-02 listed on the BC Web site.

Kerberos Autologout Consistency and Longer Ticket Validity - The DoD HPCMP Security Implementation Group (SIG) is responsible for all issues relating to Kerberos Ticket consistency and longer ticket validity. The BC Team kindly asks you to contact the User Advocacy Group (UAG) at hpc-uag-members@hpcmo.hpc.mil to communicate your request to the SIG.