From pbartosi at andrew.cmu.edu Fri Nov 13 18:25:28 2026 From: pbartosi at andrew.cmu.edu (Piotr Bartosiewicz) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2026 18:25:28 -0500 Subject: Quick reminder about Auton cluster usage practices Message-ID: Dear All, We have recently observed an increase in practices that negatively impact the overall performance, availability, and fair-share allocation of the Auton cluster. Specifically, I'd like to address two primary concerns: *node camping* and the *abuse of the debug partition*. 1. Debug Partition The debug partition is strictly intended for short-term testing, code compilation, and rapid troubleshooting. It is configured with high priority to provide fast turnaround times, but it has limited resources. Resources are shared between debug and preempt partitions. If debug is not used you are free to use those resources in the preempt partition. 2. Node Camping / Idle Resource Reservation Node camping occurs when users reserve resources and leave them idle, underutilized, or fail to release them promptly upon completion. This also includes submitting *dummy jobs*?such as sleep scripts, infinite no-op loops, or scripts that artificially generate fake GPU load or hold idle VRAM?solely to retain a node or GPU allocation for later use. With limited and shared resources, this practice is unacceptable. Users repeatedly violating these guidelines will have their jobs terminated and may face temporary suspension of their cluster privileges. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping our cluster fair and efficient for everyone. Piotr. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: