Purdue University

Problem

I receive this message when logging in:

/usr/bin/xauth: error in locking authority file

Solution

Your home directory disk quota is full. You may check your quota with myquota.

You will need to free up space in your home directory.

Problem

Your console hangs while trying to connect to a RCAC Server.

Solution

This can happen due to various reasons. Most common reasons for hanging SSH terminals are:

• Network: If you are connected over wifi, make sure that your Internet connection is fine.
• Busy front-end server: When you connect to a cluster, you SSH to one of the front-ends. Due to transient user loads, one or more of the front-ends may become unresponsive for a short while. To avoid this, try reconnecting to the cluster or wait until the server you have connected to has reduced load.
• File system issue: If a server has issues with one or more of the file systems (home, scratch, or depot) it may freeze your terminal. To avoid this you can connect to another front-end.

If neither of the suggestions above work, please contact rcac-help@purdue.edu specifying the name of the server where your console is hung.

Problem

You have graduated or left Purdue but continue collaboration with your Purdue colleagues. You find that your access to Purdue resources has suddenly stopped and your password is no longer accepted.

Solution

Access to all Research Computing resources depends on having a valid Purdue Career Account. Expired Career Accounts are removed twice a year, during Spring and October breaks (more details at the official page). If your Career Account was purged due to expiration, you will not be be able to access the resources.

To provide remote collaborators with valid Purdue credentials, the University provides a special procedure called R4P ("request for privileges") (see details under 'Data/Access' tab). If you need to continue your collaboration with your Purdue PI, the PI will have to work with their departmental Business Office to submit or renew an R4P request on your behalf.

After your R4P is completed and Career Account is restored, please note two additional necessary steps:

• Access: Restored Career Accounts by default do not have any Research Computing resources enabled for them. Your PI will have to login to the Manage Users tool and explicitly re-enable your access by un-checking and then ticking back checkboxes for desired queues/Unix groups resources.

• Email: Restored Career Accounts by default do not have their @purdue.edu email service enabled. While this does not preclude you from using Research Computing resources, any email messages (be that generated on the clusters, or any service announcements) would not be delivered - which may cause inconvenience or loss of compute jobs. To avoid this, we recommend setting your restored @purdue.edu email service to "Forward" (to an actual address you read). The easiest way to ensure it is to go through the Account Setup process.

Problem

You receive the following message after entering a command to bring up a graphical window

cannot connect to X server cannot open display

Solution

This can happen due to multiple reasons:

1. Reason: Your SSH client software does not support graphical display by itself (e.g. SecureCRT or PuTTY).
   • Solution: Try using a client software like Thinlinc or MobaXterm as described in the SSH X11 Forwarding guide.

2. Reason: You did not enable X11 forwarding in your SSH connection.

   • Solution: If you are in a Windows environment, make sure that X11 forwarding is enabled in your connection settings (e.g. in MobaXterm or PuTTY). If you are in a Linux environment, try

     ssh -Y -l username hostname

3. Reason: If you are trying to open a graphical window within an interactive job, make sure you are using the -X option with qsub after following the previous step(s) for connecting to the front-end. Please see the example in the Interactive Jobs guide.
4. Reason: If none of the above apply, make sure that you are within quota of your home directory.

Problem

You receive the following message after typing a command

bash: command not found

Solution

This means the system doesn't know how to find your command. Typically, you need to load a module to do it.

Problem

You receive the following message after typing a command, e.g. module load intel

bash: module command not found

Solution

The system cannot find the module command. You need to source the modules.sh file as below

source /etc/profile.d/modules.sh

or

#!/bin/bash -i

Problem

You receive the following message after trying to launch Firefox browser inside your graphics desktop:

Close Firefox

Firefox is already running, but not responding.  To open a new window,
you  must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.

Solution

When Firefox runs, it creates several lock files in the Firefox profile directory (inside ~/.mozilla/firefox/ folder in your home directory). If a newly-started Firefox instance detects the presence of these lock files, it complains.

This error can happen due to multiple reasons:

1. Reason: You had a single Firefox process running, but it terminated abruptly without a chance to clean its lock files (e.g. the job got terminated, session ended, node crashed or rebooted, etc).
   • Solution: If you are certain you do not have any other Firefox processes running elsewhere, please use the following command in a terminal window to detect and remove the lock files:

     $ unlock-firefox

2. Reason: You may indeed have another Firefox process (in another Thinlinc or Gateway session on this or other cluster, another front-end or compute node). With many clusters sharing common home directory, a running Firefox instance on one can affect another.
   • Solution: Try finding and closing running Firefox process(es) on other nodes and clusters.
   • Solution: If you must have multiple Firefoxes running simultaneously, you may be able to create separate Firefox profiles and select which one to use for each instance.

How do I know Non-uniform Memory Access (NUMA) layout on Brown?

• You can learn about processor layout on Brown nodes using the following command:

  brown-a000:~$ lstopo-no-graphics

• For detailed IO connectivity:

  brown-a000:~$ lstopo-no-graphics --physical --whole-io

• Please note that NUMA information is useful for advanced MPI/OpenMP/GPU optimizations. For most users, using default NUMA settings in MPI or OpenMP would give you the best performance.