Last update: 05/15/2008
CISL Customer Support spans the entirety of CISL. When you use this system -- a combination of phone, email, trouble-ticket and walk-in services -- your request is either answered on the spot by the Computer Production Group, or is directed to the CISL group or section best qualified to assist you. The point is, your question will be answered or redirected in the most expedient manner, and since almost all questions or requests are placed in the ExtraView ticket system, the responses are trackable. This support service is available 7x24, excluding NCAR holidays, though harder questions are usually not handled outside normal hours.
No matter what your question or problem is, CISL staff members look forward to providing an answer or resolution to you. Our mission is to provide the highest quality service and support for your computing and data needs on NCAR-CISL resources.
Supercomputers generate a lot of numbers, but they also generate many questions from the people who use them. Here are some tips for using our supercomputer support:
There are several things you can do to obtain the best and fastest help with your computing problems:
If you receive no response from the supercomputer when you try to log in, and the Daily Bulletin doesn't indicate that the system is unavailable, then it may be down. In this situation, call the CISL Computer Production Group at 303-497-1200 to ask a staff member about the status.
If the system or service is operational and it seems that you are having a problem with the supercomputer hardware or its system software, then report this problem via any of the methods on the CISL Customer Support link. No matter what the problem -- e.g. accessing the system, troubleshooting a programming problem, compiler, hardware issues, system or applications software, accounting for resource usage, etc. -- please report it so we can assist you.
If you are having problems with your code, then contact the Consulting Services Group directly during normal hours by calling (303) 497-1200 and ask to speak to a consultant. Or, use any of the other methods on the CISL Customer Support link to make contact. This includes help with your application development and strategies for implementing it, parallel programming techniques, unix scripting, batch job queueing, and archiving services. The consultants regularly provide advice and guidance to assist users with resource usage, code tuning, library needs, tool usage, and much more.
If you have a particularly difficult computing problem, CISL staff will probably need to recreate the problem to fully analyze it and develop a solution. Your input may include a tarfile with source code, your makefile, input data, instructions for running the code, and sample output that shows the problem.
Specifically, this includes:
Preparing instructions sufficient to run the code on a system with the same architecture and the same system software levels as the one you are using. Don't make any other assumptions.
If the code requires a third-party software library such as netcdf, include this information.
If the code is parallel, include information about the number of processors on which it runs and what must be done to change processor counts (such as, does the code require a recompile, what are the restrictions on processor counts, and so on).
Describe how the sample output is produced. Are identical results expected if the code runs on a different number of processors? If not, what is the expected difference?
Provide any other information that might be useful to help analyze and debug the problem.
Overview of computing at NCAR - Table of contents
If you have questions about this document, please contact us via any of the methods (phone, email, ticket, or in person) described here: CISL Customer Support.
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