Skip to content

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a very common problem it might be covered in this FAQ section, if you are unlucky and you cannot find any help on this page, please contact us at cecile-admins-l at ovgu.de.

Cecile access

  • I can't access the cluster from outside the university.

    If you are outside the university network you can access Cecile only though eduVPN.

  • I mistyped my password a few times and I cannot login on Cecile any longer

    If you mistype your password 3 times in a row, you can retry to login after 10 minutes.

Data

  • I would like to put my data on Cecile, what should I do?

    Data on Cecile are organized as projects. A project can be requested to the admin after filling in a questionnaire. Please, read the relevant information.

  • I am trying to transfer data from Cecile to my local computer via rsync, but it fails with the following error: rsync: mkdir "/home/my-local-computer/Documents" failed: No such file or directory (2) rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at main.c(663) [Receiver=3.1.3].

    When transferring data from the cluster to your local computer via rsync, you have to run the rsync from your local computer and not from cluster. Please, read the relevant information

  • I am unable to produce new files on my home or groups or projects

    In Cecile directories such as home, groups and projects have quotas, which means that there is a fix limit to the amount of data that can be added to those directories. Please, refer to the relevant information.

Slurm

Failing jobs

  • My jobs failed with no apparent error, what could the cause be?

    You might not have created a folder for saving your log files (errors and outputs), try to create the log folder. Please, refer to the relevant information

  • My job failed with the following error: error: *** JOB 217698 ON compute01 CANCELLED AT 2024-09-26T23:22:59, DUE TO TIME LIMIT ***

    Your job failed because you specified a lower duration than the one needed by your computations. Try increasing the duration of your job with the parameter #SBATCH --time=01:00:00 #D-HH:MM:SS. Please, refer to the relevant information

  • My job failed withe the following error: error: Detected 1 oom-kill event(s) in StepId=217699.batch cgroup. Some of your processes may have been killed by the cgroup out-of-memory, handler..

    Your job might have failed because the memory you have requested for your job is not enough. You might want to investigate your failed job via seff or sacct to understand the actual amount of RAM that your job requires, and increase your RAM accordingly by changing the parameter #SBATCH --mem-per-cpu or #SBATCH --mem. Depending on your job, you might also need to change your CPU request. Please refer to the relevant information

  • My job failed with the following error: line 13: ./my_script.py: Permission denied.

    Your job might have failed because your script is not executable, you can either make your script executable, or you could explicitly call the language you need to run your script (e.g. python my_script.py or bash my_script.sh).

  • Although I load the software stack my job failed because the software I needed was not found. What can be the reason for it?

    Did you load the software stuck from your slurm script? If this is not the case try to load the software stack directly in the slurm script.

Slurm common commands

  • How do I check whether my job is running?

    Use the command squeue

  • How can I see information about my job?

    You can use either the command seff or sacct, please, refer to the relevant information

Software stack

  • I cannot find a software in Cecile

    Software in Cecile are available in a software stack that needs to be loaded before getting access to a specific software. Please, refer to the relevant information

  • I cannot find the software I need in the software stack.

    1. After loading the software stack, you can use the command module avail to print the list of available software.
    2. Some software in the software stack have slightly different names, for example python packages are called py-<package name> (e.g. py-pandas) or R packages are all called r-<library name>.
    3. If you cannot still find the software among the available software that means that the software is not yet included in the software stack. Please contact cecile-admins-l at ovgu.de to request the software.