CASTOR Lab Rules

CASTOR people, please follow these simple rules. For any questions contact one of the CASTOR faculty. Thank you!

General rules

  1. Do not sit on the desks - they will break!
  2. Lock the door when you leave the lab, even for a short time
  3. Log off when you leave the lab, even for a short time; you may log out an account if the owner is not present
  4. All workstations are to be shared; do not make it difficult for other students to use a workstation by cluttering the work space; if you are running a long-term job for which you must remain logged on the machine, leave a clear sign to this effect on the workstation
  5. Do not leave printouts, papers, books, bottles, or other personal items around workstations when you are not there; such items will be trashed without warning
  6. Keep the lab clean and tidy; any unmarked junk will be trashed without warning
  7. Clean perishables out of the fridge every week; unmarked, unsealed perishables will be trashed
  8. Do not reboot or shutdown any machines; notify the CASTOR faculty if a crash makes a reboot necessary
  9. Do not use the color laser printer unless authorized by a CASTOR faculty
  10. If you need supplies (e.g., paper for the printer), ask the faculty who is supporting you or working with you
  11. If the waste or recycling basket are full, leave them outside the door so that the custodians can empty them
  12. The phone is to be used for short outgoing local calls only; in case of abuse, all outgoing calls will be disabled
  13. The thermostat setting can be adjusted; please be considerate of others
  14. If you run into any problems, send email to "root" from one of the linux machines or contact one of the CASTOR faculty

Being "nice"

"Nice"-ing processes

It is customary in the CASTOR lab to "nice" processes that will take a long time. To do this type 
euro:~> nice <command>
where "<command>" is what you would normally type to run your process.

"Renice"-ing processes

If your long-running process is already running, you can "renice" it. To do this first type "ps" to see what processes are running and then type "renice <newpriority> <process id number>". Typically the value of newpriority used is 10 but if you are feeling particularly nice you may use a value of 18.

An example is shown below: 

euro:~> ps
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
27077  p2 S    0:00 bash
27080  p2 R    0:30 myprogram
27084  p2 R    0:00 ps
euro:~> renice 10 27080

Running a process in the background

If you have a long running process, you'll need to run the process in the background so that you can log out without stopping the process from running. There are a couple ways to run a process in the background:
  1. If the process is already running, press Ctrl-Z (it will then be suspended). Then type "bg".
  2. Run it initially in the background: 
    euro:~> nice <myprogram> &
If you run the process in the background you can log out and the process will still be running. (Note: to ensure this, if you launch your job from an xterm, make sure you invoke the xterm with the explicit machine name, else the job may be killed upon quitting X.) When you log in later and want to know if your process has finished, type: 
euro:~> ps ux | grep <yourusername>
for the list of processes running. Example: 
euro:~> ps ux | grep fil
fil 27077  0.8  0.9  1916  1172  p2 S    13:28   0:00 bash
fil 27086  0.0  0.5   988   640  p2 R    13:28   0:00 ps aux
fil 27087  0.0  0.2   856   356  p2 S    13:28   0:00 grep fil
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