Users

Creation of a new user of Mufasa

Only people with a Linux user account on Mufasa can access the machine and interact with it. Only Linux users registered to SLURM's accounting system can use SLURM to run jobs.

All requests for the creation of new users and their registration to SLURM's accounting must be authorized by a member of the academic staff in charge of Mufasa.

Requests are done by writing an email

TO: Giulio Fontana

CC: the person who authorizes the request

The email must provide the following 5 pieces of information:

1. name and surname of the person that the new Linux user is associated to
2. (POLIMI) email address of the person
3. user category, which can be either student (for M.Sc. students) or researcher (for everyone else, including Ph.D. students)
4. research group that the person belongs to, among those listed in Group names below
5. who authorizes the request

Usernames and group names

Mufasa usernames have the form xyyy (all lowercase), where x is the first letter of the first name of the person, and yyy is their surname (or part of it if it's too long). For instance, a person called Giuseppe Brambilla will be assigned username gbrambill.

On Linux machines, users belong to groups. On Mufasa, groups are used to identify research groups. Assigment of Mufasa's users to groups follow these rules:

• All users corresponding to physical people belong to group users
• Additionally, each user must belong to one and only one of the following groups:
  • cartcas, i.e. CartCasLab (prof. Cerveri);
  • biomech, i.e. Biomechanics Research Group (prof. Votta);
  • nearmrs, i.e. Medical Robotics Section of NearLab (prof. De Momi);
  • nearnes, i.e. NeuroEngineering Section of NearLab (prof. Ferrante);
  • bio, for BioEngineering users not belonging to any of the research groups listed above.

The person cited within brackets is the faculty who is in charge of Mufasa for each group.

Removing inactive usernames

Mufasa usernames that are not in use anymore must be removed. Typically, these correspond either to M.Sc. students who graduated or to researchers that leave POLIMI.

Removing a username means:

• deleting the username from the Linux system
• deleting the home directory from the filesystem

Removing inactive usernames is necessary to preserve Mufasa's safety and to avoid wasting resources (e.g., disk space).

Whenever a username is no more in use, the people responsible for its owner (Ph.D., professors, ...) 'must':

1. check the home directory and copy any useful leftovers somewhere else
2. write an email to Giulio Fontana to tell that the username can be removed.