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The DEC Code of Conduct

The DEC cluster is a shared computing environment where collaboration meets raw power. To keep things fair, efficient, and friendly, we've assembled this set of usage guidelines. By following these rules, you help ensure that everyone gets a fair shot at the system's resources.

1. Be Transparent

  • Name your jobs like a pro. Avoid run.sh and aim for align_euclid_march24.sh.
  • If your job is long or demanding, give everyone a heads-up. Use comments, issue tracking, or even the mailing list like it's 1999.

2. Resource Sharing

  • You can use the cluster as you like, mardec is a sandbox.
  • If you need to run long jobs and/or use a large number of nodes, please let us know with a gitlab issue.

And if you’re not sure, do not hesitate to ask! We don’t bite (when we've been fed).

Long Jobs

For long-running jobs (more than 72 hours), please create an issue on GitLab to declare your intentions: DEC GitLab Issues with the template long-job-renice.

We will set up a cron job to renice your jobs to a lower priority (nice +19) during the week day (8h-18h) to ensure that other users can run their jobs. This will help balance the load on the cluster and keep things running smoothly. Your jobs will be reniced back to normal priority (nice 0) during the night and weekends.

Node Reservations

You can reserve nodes for your own use. This is especially useful for large jobs or when you need to run multiple tasks simultaneously.

Create an issue on GitLab to declare your intentions: DEC GitLab Issues with the template node-reservation.

We will set up a reservation for you, the nodes will be reserved for your use only. This is a great way to ensure that you have the resources you need when you need them but please keep that for when you really need it.

We’ll maintain a shared calendar view here:
📅 DEC Reservation Calendar

3. Respect the Disk Space

  • No quotas, no worries — but don’t be a data hoarder.
  • Use /datadec for active personal projects and /loftdec for active collaborations, /roofdec for inactive data and /scratch for temporary data (see Disk Space and Storage Options).
  • If you need to create a new collaboration directory, please create an issue on GitLab to request it: DEC GitLab Issues with a template collab-directory.
  • If you need more than 10 TB either for a collaboration or personal project, please create an issue on GitLab to request it: DEC GitLab Issues with a template disk-reservation.

4. Monitor Like a Pro

  • Use htop, ps, or your favorite command-line incantation.
  • Kill zombie processes.

5. Clean Up After Yourself

  • Delete what’s not needed
  • Archive what is needed not on DEC, DEC is not a safe storage

6. Be Human

  • If something breaks, say so. If someone uses 10 nodes silently, ask kindly.
  • Use decusers@cppm.in2p3.fr for questions, issues, or sharing your favotite bash command.

Thanks for keeping things cool (only the CPUs should be hot).

7. Acknowledge the DEC in Publications

If you publish results that relied on computations performed on the DEC cluster:

Please acknowledge both the DEC (Dark Energy Center) and the CPPM.

Suggested Acknowledgment Text:

"This work was performed using the Dark Energy Center (DEC) hosted at Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS/IN2P3, CPPM, Marseille, France."

You can adapt this to fit the format of your publication or presentation, but please keep both the DEC and the CPPM affiliation visible.