FAQ
Getting Help
Request Tracker is Sysnet’s help request system used for tracking issues related to network, computer, services, or any IT related problem or question in Oden Institute. All staff members in Sysnet monitor requests as they come by, it is important to use RT when requesting help and avoid reaching out to an individual member of Sysnet.
How to reach Sysnet
You will see the following email link on many help pages, RT .
How to write good support requests
This body of text was inspired by other organizational units in the HPC realm, TRECIS and UiT. We’ve tailored it to our environment.
Writing good support requests is not only good for Sysnet, it is also better for you! We receive many help requests on a daily basis, we also have other projects we’re working on, so our time is precious. The easier it is for us to understand your problem, the faster we will get to it. Below is a list of good practices.
Provide basic information about the host, network, and you
Provide us the hostname for the desktop or the server you’re having issue with. We attempt to affix a label with the DNS hostname on the front of the workstation. If it’s missing a label, we need to know. Don’t see the hostname? Open a terminal and issue ‘hostname’.
What is your Oden Institute user name? You’re EID is helpful in some cases.
If you’re having a network issue, provide us information about the port you are connected to, include the outlet or ACO information, usually a 3 or 4 digit number followed by a ‘D’. If you’re on the wireless, let us know that too.
If you’re using a UT owned laptop or tablet, provide us a UT tag number often on the back of the device.
Provide a room number in the event we need to come to you.
If it’s a printer, provide the printer name. Printers should be labeled with a designation like pr6330 or cp5126, where the digits represent the room number. If it’s missing a label or is incorrect, we need to know!
Providing as much information about your physical environment as possible helps avoid us peppering you with questions.
Never send support requests to staff members directly
Always send a help request to RT and the Sysnet team will pick them up there. Sending the request to RT makes sure that one of us will see it. Emailing any Sysnet team member directly just slows the process down, we’ll kindly ask you to submit the help request or simply ignore it!
Do not manhandle us as simple as Let me Google that for you assistants
Yes, sometimes we feel like we’re just Google assistants. However, most problems at the institute don’t really fit into this category. If you find that you cannot find the answer on Google or you don’t think your problem can be solved by Google, keep reading this thread.
Provide a descriptive subject
Your subject line should be descriptive, Problem on katrina is vague. It makes it difficult to search for the issue.
Include actual commands and error messages
When submitting help requests, please include the commands you run as well as any error messages you receive. Please copy and paste these into the email/ticket. If you fail to do so, we will likely be annoyed and request this information.
Please refrain from submitting screenshots or pictures (JPEG, PNG, etc…) of what you see on your terminal screen. Not everyone views emails using a graphical email client and doing this slows us down while trying to research your issue. We don’t care what your ticket “looks” like. We just need the relevant text copy/pasted into the email/ticket so we can quickly and easily research your problem.
Create a new ticket for a new issue
Replying to an open ticket with an unrelated issue slows everything down and causes more confusion. The help request system is a historical database, we regularly use it to search back on older issues to help in resolving a new issues.
The XY problem
Quoting from The XY Problem:
User wants to do X.
User doesn't know how to do X, but thinks they can fumble their way
to a solution if they can just manage to do Y.
User doesn't know how to do Y either.
User asks for help with Y.
Others try to help user with Y, but are confused because Y seems
like a strange problem to want to solve.
After much interaction and wasted time, it finally becomes clear
that the user really wants help with X, and that Y wasn't even a
suitable solution for X.
Please avoid the XY problem. If you’re having issues with Y but are trying to do X, please tell us about X. Tell us exactly what you are trying to do. Occasionally, solving Y can take a long time while solving for X is simpler.
Provide relevant information about what works
If you are submitting a request because your issue only manifests in certain situations, let us know. It’s helpful for us to know if your problem exists all the time or if it’s only present under specific conditions. Providing us with more information will make it easier to isolate the issue and avoid long email threads where we have to ask many questions. Let us know what steps you’ve taken to try and isolate the issue so that we can quickly provide assistance.
Tell us about your environment
What code are you attempting run? Is it custom? If so, where is this located? Is it using one of our modules? It is? What modules are you loading. Wait, did you update your .bashrc or touch it, you might look there.
What we’re driving at here is pretty simple, you should provide us as much information about your environment as possible, this includes if you’re running conda, jupyter, etc…
Simple cases: Be specific, include commands and errors
Simply saying “X didn’t work” will not result in us solving your issue. Please provide the exact commands run, the environment, the output and error messages. Providing us with the actual error messages is extremely useful. It allows us to easily copy and paste it while researching your issue. The better you describe the problem the less we have to guess and ask.
Occasionally seeing the actual error message is enough to provide a useful answer. In almost every case, you will need to make sure the problem is reproducible and provide us with a way to reproduce.
Complex cases: Create an example which reproduces the problem
For complex issues, please create an example that we can copy, paste and run which demonstrates the problem. It’s too time-consuming for our team to try and debug your issue based on incomplete information. Please also see below.
Make the example as small and fast as possible
If you are running a calculation which crashes periodically, you will need to reduce the example running time. Your goal should be to get the example as small as possible while still demonstrating the issue.
It will be easier for us to debug an issue that crashes within a few seconds than one which has a log time measured in minutes or hours. Yes, this requires some effort on your part but it will pay off with a support request that we can answer quickly and effectively.
Intel OneAPI
In December 2020, Intel released its Intel OneAPI toolkits software development suite, which is free of charge and replaces the previous or Intel Parallel Studio XE Compiler Suite that Oden Institute licensed. In our environment, we install the Base and HPC toolkits for our current supported desktop installation, Ubunutu 22.04. This includes the following libraries and applications:
Programming languages
Intel oneAPI C++ and Data Parallel C++ compiler - C/C++ compiler
Intel Fortran Compiler - Fortran compiler
Since we installed the complete Base and HPC toolkits, there will be many modules available. The simplest form for loading the compilers icc and fortran:
$ module load intel/2022.2 icc
$ ml list
Currently Loaded Modules:
1) intel/2022.2 2) compiler-rt/2022.1.0 3) icc/2022.1.0
$ icc -v
icc version 2021.6.0 (gcc version 11.2.0 compatibility)
$ ifort -v
ifort version 2021.6.0
Libraries
The most common library used is mkl.
Intel oneAPI Math Kernel Library (MKL) - high performance math library
There are host of other libraries, visit the links in the section above, they will lead to documentation for the information on the other installed libraries.
To load the MKL:
$ ml load intel/2022.2 mkl
Loading mkl version 2022.1.0
Loading tbb version 2021.6.0
Loading compiler-rt version 2022.1.0
$ ml list
Currently Loaded Modules:
1) intel/2022.2 2) tbb/2021.6.0 3) compiler-rt/2022.1.0 4) mkl/2022.1.0
Note, by default this does not load the compiler(s).
General Questions
The easiest way is to email a request to RT.
Can I have root privileges so that I can install a program?
No. If you want root privileges on your machine, we can only grant them if we remove your ability to access your Oden Institute home directory or use our network services on that machine. Such a personal machine will be given a dynamic IP address on a sequestered network. Giving administrative privileges on departmentally-integrated machines is too large of a security risk. Anyone with administrative access would be able to trivially read your email and files).
So I can’t install anything at all?
Of course you can. You are free to install anything you want to the filesystem locations you have write access to. Since network filesystems are quota-enforced, we provide a /workspace partition; this is a fast, reasonably large storage resource on your workstation’s internal hard drive.
I can’t connect to anything, the network is down
If your machine is a desktop and has more than one Ethernet interface, make sure the ethernet cable is plugged into eth0. If you are using a notebook, make sure you are using the correct wall jack labeled “notebook”. If you are trying to use wireless, please make sure that you have an ITS PNA account. Contact Sysnet if you are unsure.
How do I access licensed software from off-campus?
Download and install the VPN software (requires login to wikis) available through ITS and log into the UT network.
Linux-specific Questions
Firefox won’t start (and it’s not already running)
Firefox probably didn’t close gracefully. You need to remove the lockfiles that were created before you will be able to start it again:
$ find ~/.mozilla/firefox/ -iname *lock*
Remove any relevant lockfiles and try starting Firefox again.
Firefox throws a weird error that starts with something like this
ASSERT: *** Search: _installLocation: engine has no file!
Stack Trace:
0:ENSURE_WARN(false,_installLocation: engine has no file!,2147500037)
This sometimes happens when you have Firefox running during an update. Restarting your browser should fix the issue.
PDF’s won’t open when I try to open them through Firefox
Set Firefox to use the Default PDF viewer in the file type options.
Prompt for password for GNOME keyring
Occasionally you might see an error when trying to do an ‘svn update’, you might see a prompt like the following:
Password for '(null)' GNOME keyring:
Remove the following file:
rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring
I can’t SSH to machine “X”; it tells me the connection was closed
Contact Sysnet and have them remove you from the hosts blacklist. Most often this occurs if you mistype your password too many times. Please refer to our Accessing hosts guide to prevent this from happening in the future.
Which machines am I allowed to use?
Access to Linux workstations are restricted by group. Determine which
groups your account belongs to by running the id command. For each
group listed, query the netgroup name service:
getent netgroup <group>
I was not required to use Linux before I arrived at Oden Institute. Is there a guide to help me understand how to use Linux?
In general, Google is your friend. The GNU/Linux distribution used at Oden Institute is Ubuntu. Therefore, most information about Ubuntu is available online will be applicable at Oden Institute. For information which is specific to the customized Oden Institute distribution, have a look at our Ubuntu 22.04 guide.
Server Certificates
Oden Institute now uses InCommon certificates as a signing authority. A deal was struck with Comodo’s InCommon Certificate Service. The root certificates for InCommon should now be available to all browsers and warnings about legitimacy of the certificate should not be an issue:
TACC Questions
Visualization Resources
Sysnet can reserve TACC’s visualization cluster, Stallion, in advance. Please submit a help request to RT.
UTBox
UTBox is a campus-wide service that allows faculty and staff at the University of Texas at Austin to use Box cloud-based file sharing for business use. Approved for Category 1 data.
For more informatin on UTBox, visit UT’s wiki pages below:
DropBox Questions
We currently do not support installation of dropbox on our workstations and strongly encourage the use of the web interface over the local installation. While Dropbox does encrypt transmissions to Dropbox servers, the cached copy on the client linked to a dropbox account is not secure. We have no control over the other clients linked to specific dropbox accounts and cannot be responsible for loss or compromise of data.
UT does support Box or UTBox. There are Box sync clients available for most major OS’s with the exception of Linux. Connecting via webdav is possible or simply use the web client. More information on Box is here:
https://www.oden.utexas.edu/sysdocs/faq/utbox.html
That being said, if you would like to use Dropbox on your machine without using the dropbox web interface, you can do the following for the OS X Oden Institute workstations:
Installing Dropbox on OS X (Mac)
Click on the following link to download the Dropbox disk image:
https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=mac
Next, navigate to the folder where the image was downloaded (default is ~/Downloads in your home directory) and open the Dropbox disk image (Dropbox x.x.x.dmg). Then drag the Dropbox application to /workspace and run it from there. When the application asks for admin login/password, just hit cancel.