Answers to frequently asked questions
Information
If you experience a problem using our resources and have not been able to find a solution in this section, please contact us by PLGrid Helpdesk.
Can I use the PLGrid infrastructure?
PLGrid resources are available to all persons working in Polish research units, as well as students, PhD students and people collaborating with Polish researchers, including retirees and foreigners.
Is PLGrid free of charge?
Users – with the exception of those with industry employee affiliation – take advantage of PLGrid free of charge. The amount of resources allocated is determined by our experts who review your application. However, as part of the grant application settlement, we would ask you to ensure that publications created using the infrastructure (including post-conference publications and theses) include the following Acknowledgements to PLGrid.
I am not employed at a Polish university, but I conduct research. How do I get access to PLGrid?
You can find a Supervisor – a researcher employed at a Polish research unit. Discuss the details of the cooperation with him/her and then apply for External collaborator affiliation.
I cannot log into a cluster, though I already have a computing grant
It is most likely that you do not yet have an active access service. Apply for the access service to a specific supercomputer in the PLGrid Portal, in the Services tab.
My affiliation is not active
If your affiliation is no longer active, it has probably not been extended on time. Read the information on affiliation extension. If you are still authorized to use PLGrid, but your affiliation has not been renewed in time, please contact us via Helpdesk.
I cannot see my home directory on the cluster
If you are our new user, please wait approximately one hour before all your account information propagates on the cluster.
I keep getting the message "invalid login" or "invalid password"
Make sure you already have a user account in PLGrid and enter the correct login (with the "plg" prefix). If you have forgotten your password, you can reset it by entering the email address you used when registering to PLGrid.
When I try to execute a script on the cluster, I get an error "FATAL: permission denied"
Grant the script/program the rights to be executed using the command:
This should solve the problem.
My jobs are waiting very long to be started – why?
If the job has not yet been scheduled, you can query the Slurm system for an estimated time to run it by adding the --test-only argument to the sbatch command:
The system will then verify the correctness of the script and provide an estimate of the job start time. The estimation is calculated pessimistically and in most cases the job is going to start earlier.
The estimated start time of a task already scheduled can be checked with the command:
This time will only be visible if the Slurm system has already scheduled the job. Due to queue optimization, the system can only complete this information when the job starts. The given start times are only estimates, and are not mandatory. There are many users on the cluster, which makes it very difficult to determine the exact start time of a job. The difficulty arises from the unpredictability of the actions of other users, who affect the state of the job queue all the time. The priority of a job, its position in the queue, depends on a number of factors, such as the amount of resources needed to start the job, the declared job execution time, the last activity of the user and other grant participants on the cluster, as well as the resources allocated in the grant.
I cannot perform calculations on the cluster, although I have an active grant and previously everything worked properly (message "sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Invalid account or account/partition combination specified")
This error may be due to exceeded (exhausted) grant resources. In the case of Ares and Athena clusters, you can check this with the command
If the allocation status of your grant is indicated here as exhausted, the grant resources have already been fully consumed. In this case you can apply for a new grant or renegotiate the current one with a request for additional resources.