Getting Triton help

There are many ways to get help, and you should try them all. If you are just looking for the most important link, it is our issue tracker.

Whatever you do, these guidelines for making good support requests are very useful.

See also

Are you just looking for a Triton account? See Triton accounts.

Give enough information

We get many requests for help which are too vague to give a useful response. So, when sending us a question, always answer these questions and you’ll get the fastest useful response:

  • Has it ever worked? (If so, what has changed?)

  • What are you trying to accomplish? (Your ultimate goal, not current technical obstacle.)

  • What did you do? (Be specific enough to be reproducible - copy and paste exact commands you run, scripts, inputs, output messages, etc.)

  • What do you need? Do you need a complete solution, pointers to get started, or should we say if it will take too long and we recommend you think of other solutions first?

If you don’t know something, it’s OK, just do your best and we’ll help from there! You can also chat with us to brainstorm about issues in general. A much more detailed guide is available from Sigma2 documentation.

The Triton docs

In case you got to this page directly, you are now on the Triton and Science-IT (CS, NBE, PHYS at least) documentation site. See the main page for the index.

Your colleagues

Science is a collaborative process, even if it doesn’t seem so. Academic courses don’t teach you everything you need to know, so it’s worth trying to work together and learn from each other - your group is the expert in it’s work, after all.

Daily garage

Come by one of the online Scientific computing garages any day at 13:00. It’s the best place to get problems solved fast - chat with us and see.

Issue tracker

We keep track of cluster issues at https://version.aalto.fi/gitlab/AaltoScienceIT/triton/issues. Feel free to post your issue there. Either admins or other users can reply — and you should feel free to reply and help others, too. The system is accessible from anywhere in the world, but you need to login with HAKA (using the button). All newly created issues are reported to admins by email.

This is primary support channel and meant for general issues like general help, troubleshooting, problems with code, new software requests, problems that may affect several users.

Note

If you get a message that you are blocked from version.aalto.fi, send the email to servicedesk. It’s not your fault: it automatically blocks people when their organizational unit changes. Yes, this is bad but it’s not in our control…

If you have an Aalto visitor account, login with HAKA won’t work - use your email address and Aalto password.

Email ticketing system

For private issues you can also contact us via our email alias (on our wiki pages, login required). This is primarily intended for specific issues such as requesting new accounts, quotas, etc. Please avoid sending personal mails directly to admins, because it is best for all admins to be aware of issues, people may be absent, and personal emails are likely to be lost.

Most general issues should be reported to the issue tracker instead, not by email. Email is primarily for accounts related queries.

Research Software Engineers

Sometimes, a problem goes beyond “Triton support” and becomes “Research support”. Our Research Software Engineers are perfect for these kinds of problems: they can program with you, set up your workflow, or even handle all the technical problems for you.

Users’ mailing list

All cluster users are on the triton-users mailing list (automagically kept in sync with those who have Triton access). It is for announcements and open discussions mainly, for problem solving please try the tracker.

If you do not receive list emails, you’d better check out with your local Triton admin that you are on the list. Otherwise you miss all the announcements including critical ones about maintenance breaks.

Triton support team

Most of us are members of your department’s support teams, so can answer questions about balancing use of Triton and your department’s computers. We also like it when people drop by and talk with us, so that we can better plan our services. In general, don’t mail us directly - use either the issue tracker above or the support email address. You can address your request to a specific person.

Dept

Name

Location

CS/NBE

Mikko Hakala

T-building A243 / Otakaari 3, F354

CS

Simo Tuomisto

T-building A243

PHYS

Simppa Äkäslompolo

Otakaari 1, Y415a

PHYS

Ivan Degtyarenko

Otakaari 1, Y415a

CS/SCI

Richard Darst

T-building A243

NBE

Enrico Glerean

Otakaari 3, F354

Science-IT trainings

We have regular training in topics relevant to HPC and scientific computing. In particular, each January and June we have a “kickstart” course which teaches you everything you need to know to do HPC work. Each Triton user should come to one of these. For the schedule, see our training page.

Getting a detailed bug report with triton-record-environment

We have a script named triton-record-environment which will record key environment variables, input, and output. This greatly helps in debugging.

To use it to run a single command that gives an error:

triton-record-environment YOUR_COMMAND
Saving output to record-environment.out.txt
...

Then, just check the output of record-environment.out.txt (it shouldn’t have any confidential information, but make sure) and send it to us/attach it to the bug report.

If you use Python, add the -p option, matlab should use -m, and graphical programs should use -x (these options have to go before the command you execute).