Gloworm Cluster Usage Policy

Although there is not yet a formal usage policy specifically oriented to the gloworm cluster, Stanford's Computer Usage Policy applies to all users of the gloworm cluster.

Sharing of individual user accounts is prohibited.

Users should choose a secure password.

File space usage

First, a few quotes...

The steady state of disks is full. -- Ken Thompson

Parkinson's Law of Data: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"

Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide

Quotas are not intended to hinder your productivity. They are intended to keep the system usable to all by preventing the disks from filling up.

Each user is given a small initial quota on a filesystem that is backed up regularly. If you need more permanent file space, contact action@gloworm. Make sure to indicate how much more you expect that you will need, or the request will be silently ignored

There is roughly 160GB of scratch space available on the blades.

There is also additional file space available to any user in the /scratch partition. Please create a unique directory under /scratch for your use. This filesystem is permanent (unlike /tmp, which is cleared on a reboot), but it is NOT BACKED UP. Do not store critical files on /scratch.

Use of critical shared directories

Please do not leave mail in your incoming mailbox (/var/spool/mail/$USER). This is a small shared area, and it would quickly fill up if everyone did this.

Read this for more information, or contact action@gloworm.

"Unofficial" Usage Requests

The emphasis here is on courtesy in the use of shared resources. With this in mind:
action@gloworm.stanford.edu
Last modified: Mon Nov 15 16:26:21 PST 2004