ICICS Cluster Scheduling

Date Opened: Nov 08, 2011

Impact: 3 = research affected

Contact Person: Hagin, Anika

Issue: Hagit and Anika are using the ICICS cluster and have had issues with job scheduling. If a long job is scheduled, it will use the entire cluster, making the cluster unavailable until that job finishes. This means that short jobs will have to wait until the long job finishes. Is there a way to change the scheduling policy so that short jobs can still run while long jobs are running?

Updates:

• Nov 22: Glen will see if Dave is in contact with Hagit.

TSE

Date Opened: Oct 14, 2011

Impact: 1 = workaround identified

Contact Person: Cheryl

Issue: When using Power Point through TSE on a Linux machine, viewing the slide show is not possible and also causes the program to crash (unsaved work is lost). Allan mentioned that he could not view videos through tse.

Updates:

• Nov 8: No update. Glen will be documenting the workaround.
• Oct 25: Not a print spooler issue since all TSE servers exhibit same problem. Probably a bug in TSE display drivers. Other users report similar issues. Workaround identified: first click the book-like icon next to the presentation icon, then click the presentation icon.
• Oct 18: The PowerPoint problem is not due to the print spool problem, and Glen will look into this.
• Oct 18: The tse server crashes often due to problems with the print spool. The tech staff knows about this problem and is working on it.

Opening PDFs in Firefox - Using Chrome Instead

Date Opened: Jul 18, 2011

Impact: 2 = inconvenience

Contact Person: Cheryl

Issue: With SuSE 11.4, the current version (5.0) of firefox does not open some PDFs. Typically, a black screen appears instead of the pdf. John was the tech staff contact for this issue.

Updates:

• Nov 22: Glen will see if it's possible to use a different version of Firefox and if that will work. Otherwise, we'll just have to wait until acroread and firefox get updated.
• Nov 22: There's no need to try to get Chrome if we can't get it for Linux since the pdf problem occurs on Linux machines.
• Nov 08: Chrome is currently being tested on boxster. Need to figure out how updates will be applied for non-admin accounts. Need to ensure default configuration (cache dir/size) is correct. May not be enough time to test it before the upcoming freeze.
• Oct 18: There is no soln for using acroread in Firefox. (Can use xpdf instead). Glen will be on the lookout for acroread updates. Best soln would be to get Chrome to work.
• Oct 04: Chrome is not part of 11.4 distribution, so tech staff won't support it. But, Glen will continue testing to see if he could get Chrome to work because it would be good to have if it opens pdfs and flash.
• Oct 04: Problem is with default version of acroread in 11.4 installation (in usr/bin). Glen will try to build a more current version of acroread in cs/local.
• Sep 27: Is it possible to get a dept-wide version of Chrome? Issues:
  • Chrome should be set up (via command line) to write cache to temp dir instead of home dir.
  • Chrome by default updates silently when user opens it. Is there a way to set it to notify tech staff so that tech staff can do update?
  • Tech staff would need to maintain another piece of software. Could be a maintenance issue.
• Sep 27: Glen found that acroread crashes after opening multiple pdfs.

Meeting notes

• Check Conference Freeze Dates page monthly and notify tech staff of any new freezes.
• Check imager disk space list monthly for users over 25GB.
• Nov 8: stray simulation currently generating large amounts of data on imager. Robert will ask Hagit to clean up or we may have to resort to quotas.
• No replacement yet identified for Windows rep.
• Siggraph freeze: Nov 15-Jan 20. Update freeze list machines on Sunday before the freeze.
• Hagit/Anika reported an issue with ICICS cluster scheduling. Is Dave Brent aware of it?