Getting help

If you have a problem using our systems, or just want advice on something, please use the support form in SUPR.

For Berzelius support, please use the support form in SUPR for Berzelius.

Support questions regarding SMHI and MET systems (for example Freja, Stratus, Cirrus, Nebula, MARS, …) should be sent to smhi-support@nsc.liu.se.

Support questions regarding Saab systems should primarily use normal Saab support channels (e.g contact the Saab helpdesk or phone the Saab HPC admins). In emergencies, or if the question clearly should be handled by NSC, use saab-support@nsc.liu.se.

Support questions regarding ESGF systems should be sent to esg-admin@nsc.liu.se.

You can also send email to support@nsc.liu.se if you have general questions or one of the methods above fails.

Please do not send support questions directly to NSC staff’s personal email addresses. Email sent to personal addresses might get lost or not read promptly (e.g when someone is on leave). Email to the support addresses listed above is always read promptly during normal work hours, and are automatically registered in our support system so they don’t get lost.

You can use the support addresses for most things, e.g.:

• Asking a question
• Telling us that something is wrong
• Start a discussion regarding some long-term issue or future needs
• Requesting the installation of a software package

When you have a new question, please submit a new support request, instead of replying to an old conversation. A reply to an old email might only reach the person who handled that problem, and that person could be busy, on leave etc. Submitting a new support request ensures that it is seen by all support staff as soon as possible.

Phone?

We normally do not accept support questions over the phone.

The main reason for this is that HPC-related problems are best described in text form. We need to see the exact error messages, job IDs, locations of job scripts etc. Communicating this type of information over the phone is very time-consuming and inaccurate.

Also, using the support form or the support email addresses ensures that most NSC staff members will see your question promptly, and the best person for the job can then respond.

If you cannot describe your problem properly in an email, send an email anyway and describe it as much as possible and include a phone number where we can reach you if necessary.

In an emergency, you can find NSC phone numbers on our web page.

What to include in your support request

When reporting a problem, please include all relevant information in your initial request, such as:

• A relevant subject line (e.g “I cannot start Matlab on Tetralith”).
• Which NSC system your question is about (e.g Tetralith)
• Your username on this system (e.g x_abcde)
• The job IDs of affected jobs (this is very useful information for us, as it enables us to find lots more information about the job from various logs). If you don’t have the job ID, try to provide other information that might help us find out where and when the job ran (e.g node names and/or the time the job failed)
• Which software you are using. If you built the software youself, please include information on which compilers you used (for example “ifort 9.0.032”) and switches (for example “-apo”).
• A short description of the problem, specifying what actions you have performed, which results you got, and which results you expected to get.
• If the problem is a network communication problem between you and NSC, please include details of your own computer (operating system, IP address, …) and network (At home? At KTH? …). You can use this page to find out which IP address you use.
• If possible, leave the files used by a failed job intact, or make a copy of them for NSC to look at. If you have edited e.g a job script after the job failed, it’s impossible for us to know how the failed job was started, and that often makes it impossible to tell why it failed.

When you use the support form in SUPR, you will get help there too that is similar to the checklist above.

If you have more than one separate question/problem, please submit one support reuqest for each.

Don’t be afraid to include lots of information!

If possible, please cut and paste the text of error messages rather than re-typing them by hand or taking a screenshot. If it is the only way to copy the message, or if it is from a graphical program, a screenshot may be appropriate.

You may attach small (<10MB) files (e.g logs, error messages, screenshots) via email. If you submit your support request via the support form in SUPR, you will get an automatic reply email from the support system, that you can reply to in order to attach files.

By providing as much information as possible in your initial request, we can get started on the problem immediately without having to ask followup questions.

You may use English or Swedish. We will try to reply in the same language. Please note that as we have some staff that are not fluent in Swedish, you may sometimes get an answer in English regardless of the language of your original question.

We read support requests during normal office hours (approximately 08–17 local Swedish time: CET/CEST). We try to always give you some kind of answer (not counting the automated one) within two working days (but you will usually hear from us sooner than that).

You will get an automated reply from our support ticket system within a few minutes. If you want to add more information about your problem, reply to that email, that way the additional information will automatically be added to our database.