UCSC Scientific Visualization Laboratory policies

Date: 20 April 1999

Primary Goal:

The computer viz serves the Natural Sciences Division and the School of Engineering, providing the fastest graphics possible as well as associated audio-visual equipment and software to make state-of-the-art scientific visualizations.

Location

The UCSC Scientific Visualization Laboratory is located in room 252, Applied Sciences Building. The viz computer is located in the neighboring SoE machine room (with a display, keyboard, mouse and DLT in room 252) for security, noise and cooling reasons. Room 252 is accessible through room 228, opposite the CS/CE Dept. Office. Omnilocks have been installed on the access doors. Certain CS/CE research SGIs are also in room 252, behind a partition. These CS/CE machines are, in general, not available for general use by all visualization lab participants.

The SoE machine room (250 Applied Sciences) is adjacent to room 252 and is off-limits to users and alarmed. To access the CD-ROM, you MUST be escorted by the vizlab manager. The CD-ROM is built into the Onyx/2 power supply and therefore cannot be moved outside the machine room.

User accounts

User accounts are currently available. Any faculty member in the Natural Sciences Division or the School of Engineering can request user accounts on viz for themselves and any colleagues or students employed by or enrolled in UCSC. They can also request a home directory and/or a project directory on the local viz computer disks for their use. Here is an account signup form. The vizlab director, vizlab-manager@cse.ucsc.edu, can direct them to the appropriate person for room access.

For purposes of grant renewal for the visualization lab, we must collect information about how the system is used. All users are requested to briefly explain their projects to facilitate this.

Accounts are understood to expire on the following October 1, unless renewal arrangements are made. This is only to prevent piling-up of stale accounts and data, and it is intended that renewal be as painless as possible.

User policy and disk access:

Users can request a local user account on viz, and/or they can have their home directories remote-mounted from SOE file servers. Disks will not be exported from viz, as this could cause uncontrollable contention for computer resources on a box that will occasionally need all resources for real-time applications. Console users have priority. Upon request, large scratch directorie(s), in which users can work on local disks, will be set up. We provide real-time video speeds from one large striped disk set. We also provide space for users' ongoing projects. Currently, 5Gb "soft" quotas are in place, because of abuse from one research group. This quota may be exceeded for up to four weeks, to enable large short-term projects. It is never acceptable to archive large amounts of data on this machine -- use a DLT for that. As visualization projects may create large amounts of data in a very short time, it is never acceptable to have a nearly full disk.

Backups

Data on local disks is not be backed up. This is the responsibility of the user. There is a DLT tape drive on viz, located next to the monitor.
The DLT tape drive is currently broken. -- avg

Appropriate use:

The visualization laboratory machines are understood to be primarily visualization machines. Other uses are acceptable as long as they don't interfere with visualization work. Certain visualization procedures such as making videotapes require direct console access, and these procedures must get priority over non-visualization tasks like editing programs. Note that this means you may be kicked off the console if you are doing something that doesn't need to be done there, and someone else needs it. It may also mean your background jobs may get stopped or killed (most likely the former, if there is sufficient swap available) if a visualizer needs all the resources.

A large problem has been the ubiquitous "perpetually filled disk" problem. Visualization projects sometimes require massive amounts of transitory data, and we have accumulated a total of 90 Gb of disk to facilitate that. This means it is inappropriate to store large amounts of permanent data on the system. Otherwise, we can't get the space when we need it. Because one group abused this policy, "soft quotas" are in effect. This means users can break the 5Gb limit for up to four weeks, but must reduce their usage below the limit after the time expires.

Mail

viz is not intended to be used as a mail server, and mail reception is not fully supported. For this reason, all non-SoE accounts must have .forward files in their home directories. Outgoing mail is supported, but should be used only for modest mailings.

Printing

We have 3 printers in the vizlab: In addition, other printers (in SoE or elsewhere) may be added with the cooperation of their owners.

Output

A Sony Betacam recording deck as well as two NTSC SVHS decks are attached to viz. There is also the DLT Tape drive (DOWN).

Input

Currently over the net, DLT Tape (DOWN), CD, and local generation are the input forms for this machine.

Manager location

vizlab-manager@cse.ucsc.edu

Future purchases

Planned and possible purchases are being kept on a VizLab wish list. Those with items to add to the wish list should contact vizlab-manager@cse.ucsc.edu.

Vizlab web site

You're reading it! Here is the main page.