Technical support

Ask support

• Before writing to us, consider checking first on the system status page and the Known issues page to see if the problem you're experiencing has already been reported. If you can't find the information you need on our wiki, send an email to the address below that best matches your need.
• Please ensure that the email address from which you are writing is registered in your account. This way, our ticketing system will be able to recognize you automatically.
• A well written question (or a problem description) will likely result in a faster and more accurate assistance from our staff (see a support request example below).
• An email titled "Something is wrong" or "Nothing works" will take a long time to resolve, because we will have to ask you to provide missing information (see Information required below).
• In the subject line of the email, include the system/cluster name and a few words of what may be wrong. For example, "Job 123456 fails to run on the Cedar cluster". A good subject line really helps to identify issues at a glance.
• Please do not request help on a different topic as a follow-up to an old email thread. Instead, start a brand new one to avoid re-opening an old ticket.

Email addresses

Please choose the address that corresponds best to your question or issue:

• accounts@tech.alliancecan.ca -- Questions about accounts
• renewals@tech.alliancecan.ca -- Questions about account renewals
• globus@tech.alliancecan.ca -- Questions about Globus file transfer services
• cloud@tech.alliancecan.ca -- Questions about using Cloud resources
• allocations@tech.alliancecan.ca -- Questions about the Resource Allocation Competition (RAC)
• support@tech.alliancecan.ca -- For any other question or issue

Information required

To help us help you better, please include the following information in your support request:

• Cluster name
• Job ID
• Job submission script: you can either give the full path of the script on the cluster; copy and paste the script; or attach the script file
• File or files which contain the error message(s): give the full path of the file(s); copy and paste the file(s); or attach the error message(s) file(s)
• Commands that you were executing
• Avoid sending screenshots or other large image attachments except when necessary - the plain text of your commands, job script etc. is usually more helpful. See Copy and paste if you have trouble with this.
• Software (name and version) you were trying to use
• When did the problem happen?
• If you want us to access, copy or edit your files, or inspect your account and possibly make changes there, say so explicitly in your email. For example, instead of attaching files to an email, you may indicate where they are located in your account and give us permission to access them. If you have already granted us permission via the CCDB interface to access your files, then you do not need to do it again in your support request.

Things to beware

• Never send a password!
• Maximum attachment size is 40 MB.

Support request example

To: support@tech.alliancecan.ca
Subject: Job 123456 gives errors on the CC Cedar cluster

Hello:

my name is Alice, user asmith. Today at 10:00 am MST, I submitted a job 123456 on the Cedar cluster. The Job script is located /my/job/script/path. I have not changed it since submitting my job. Since it is short I included it in the email below:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --account=def-asmith-ab
#SBATCH --nodes=1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=16
#SBATCH --time=00:05:00
{ time mpiexec -n 1 ./sample1 ; } 2>out.time

A list of the following modules were loaded at the time follow:

[asmith@cedar5]$ module list
Currently Loaded Modules:
1) nixpkgs/16.09 (S) 5) intel/2016.4 (t)
2) icc/.2016.4.258 (H) 6) imkl/11.3.4.258 (math)
3) gcccore/.5.4.0 (H) 7) openmpi/2.1.1 (m)
4) ifort/.2016.4.258 (H) 8) StdEnv/2016.4 (S)

The job ran quickly and the myjob-123456.out and myjob-123456.err files were created. There was no output in the myjob-123456.out file but there was an message in the myjob-123456.err output

[asmith@cedar5 scheduling]$ cat myjob-123456.err
slurmstepd: error: *** JOB 123456 ON cdr692 CANCELLED AT 2018-09-06T15:19:16 DUE TO TIME LIMIT ***

Can you tell me how to fix this problem?

Access to your account

If you want us to access, copy or edit your files, or inspect your account and possibly make changes there, you should state so explicitly in your email (unless you have provided consent via the CCDB). For example, instead of attaching files to an email, you may tell where they are located in your account and give us written permission to access them.

Resource Allocation Competition

Compute Canada Data Base