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• Is the application free and open source?
  • Closed-source applications may have license terms that apply to research institutions. Note that "classroom" or "student" licenses are typically invalid for multi-user clusters like HAL.
    • If you have a license for your personal use, you can install it in your home directory. We will not approve a request to install such an application system-wide.
  • Closed-source applications also need to have stated official support for IBM POWER9. Adding support for a new architecture is a complex project that can take more than a year, especially without the support of an open-source community.
  • Not all open-source applications can run on all architectures. If an open-source application doesn't have official support for IBM POWER9, check with the developers to see if it has any dependencies that don't work on IBM POWER9. Sometimes, the application itself is architecture-independent, but some of its dependencies are not, so it still won't work (for example, some machine learning framework that uses Intel-specific machine code to accelerate computation). You can try to install the application in your home directory and ask for help by submitting a ticket to help+isl@ncsa.illinois.edu.
• Do you think it will be useful for all users?
  • If it's an application with limited scope that is specifically required for just your project, consider installing it in your home directory. If it's a Python package, you can clone one of the system-wide Anaconda environments and install the package in the cloned environment.
  • If you think the application can be utilized by all users, submit a ticket to help+isl@ncsa.illinois.edu, and we will review the request. This usually takes one to a few business days and we may deny the request if we decide it should not be installed system-wide.

How do I share my files and collaborate with other HAL users?

Contact us through Slack or help+isl@ncsa.illinois.edu and provide a list of people you want to share with (with their usernames on HAL, preferably), and a name you want to call the shared folder. We will create a folder under /home/shared for your use.

My job is not running!

Use the following command to get a list of your jobs (replace user_name with your username):

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