Getting Allocation Information#
Allocations are required before accessing any of the high-performance computing resources. Allocations come in a few different forms. This guide is designed to help you find information regarding your allocations once they have been created.
If you haven’t yet applied for an allocation on Quest, please follow the Quest allocation guidelines to request an allocation.
List Allocations#
It’s often helpful to find all of the allocations that you are a member of. You can list the allocations you have access to by using the groups command.
The output of this command will first list your NetID and then the IDs of allocations to which you have access.
Example:
$ groups
abc123 p12345 b1042
In this example, abc123 is the NetID. While p12345 and b1042 are the allocations that ID is a member of. Now that we know the allocations that you are a member of, what if you wanted to see who else is a member of that allocation?
List Allocation Members#
You can list all allocation members via the lslogins command. To use the command for allocation members, be sure to include the -g argument as well as the allocation name. For example:
$ lslogins -g <account-name>
UID USER PROC PWD-LOCK PWD-DENY LAST-LOGIN GECOS
XXXX <netid1> 0 Member 1
XXXX <netid2> 0 Member 2
...
This command will output the NetIDs of all members as well as information such as when they last logged in.
Note
Some of the allocations, such as the Genomics Compute Cluster (b1042), have many members. In those cases, it’s not a good idea to run lslogins because of the number of members that it will output.
Now that we know how to check which allocations you are a member of as well as who else is a member, what if you wanted to know more specific information about the type of allocation?
Check Allocation Resources#
To find out what type an allocation is, the expiration date, and the amount of /projects/<account-name> storage used run:
$ checkproject <account-name>
The output of this command tells you lots of valuable information, such as:
Allocation type: Research I, Research II allocation, or Priority Access allocation.
How much storage is used in the allocation.
When the allocation expires.
If the allocation is active.
Below is an example of output for an active general access allocation with both storage and compute (i.e. the ability to submit jobs to Slurm using this account).
$ checkproject <account-name>
====================================
Reporting for project <account-name>
------------------------------------
1 GB in 4623 files (0% of 1000 GB quota)
Allocation Type: Allocation I
Expiration Date: 2026-12-01
Status: ACTIVE
Compute and storage allocation - when status is ACTIVE, this allocation has compute node access and can submit jobs
------------------------------------
====================================
Below is an example of output for an active general access allocation with storage only (i.e. cannot submit jobs to Slurm using this account).
$ checkproject <account-name>
====================================
Reporting for project <account-name>
------------------------------------
0 GB in 9 files (0% of 1024 GB quota)
Allocation Type: Allocation I
Expiration Date: 2026-12-01
Status: ACTIVE
Storage only allocation - this allocation has no compute node access and cannot submit jobs
------------------------------------
====================================
This information is especially helpful when you are renewing an allocation or requesting access to an existing allocation. If you have any questions regarding your allocation, please reach out to quest-help@northwestern.edu .
The final example is for a Priority Access allocation. These allocations do not display an expiration date because resources can be purchased on different timelines and may expire at different times. If you have any questions regarding specific expiration dates, you can reach out to our team using the email above.
$ checkproject <account-name>
====================================
Reporting for project <account-name>
------------------------------------
75690 GB in 4260087 files (94.00% of 80002 GB quota)
Allocation Type: Buy-in Allocation
Expiration Date: Compute and storage resources for buy-in allocations expire at different times.
Please contact quest-help@northwestern.edu for details regarding the expiration of your resources.
Status: ACTIVE
Compute and storage allocation - when status is ACTIVE, this allocation has compute node access and can submit jobs
------------------------------------
====================================