AMCL Cluster Policies
=====================

Access Privileges
-----------------
* All members of the MIT mathematics community are welcome to an account on 
  the AMCL beowulf cluster, heaviside.mit.edu.  However, because this computing 
  resource was not purchased using departmental funds, users must agree to 
  the AMCL cluster usage policies before they will be granted an account.

  If you would like an account on heaviside.mit.edu, please contact Matt Walburn.

* Users that do not comply with AMCL cluster policies will have their 
  access privileges revoked.


User Home Directories
---------------------
* For performance and security reasons, a user's home directory on 
  heaviside.mit.edu cannot be the same as his/her home directory on the rest
  of the math department network.  

* While no disk quotas will be enforced, users should, as a courtesy to 
  other users, refrain from using excessive amounts of disk space.  Care
  should be taken to remove large, unnecessary scratch files. 


Technical Support 
-----------------
* Technical support is NOT available for the cluster.  


Running Jobs
------------
* Users outside of the Bazant and Hobbs groups are required to nice their 
  jobs.  The Bazant and Hobbs groups reserve the right to kill un-niced
  jobs that interfere with their research.  
  

Backups
-------
* Users are responsible for backing up their own files.  There is 
  currently no system in place to automatically back up user home 
  home directories.  

* Users are strongly discouraged from using their normal math department 
  accounts to backup large data files.



FAQs
====

(1) How do I transfer files to/from the the beowulf cluster?

  scp and sftp

(2) How can I set up a simple backup system?

  cron job