Pitzer

Podman

Podman is an Open Containers Initiative (OCI)‑compliant, daemonless and rootless container tool developed by Red Hat. Unlike Docker, Podman operates without a central daemon and supports secure rootless execution, making it well‑suited for HPC environments and schedulers such as Slurm. 

Availability and Restrictions

Versions

Podman is available on all OSC clusters. Only one version is available at any given time. To find out the current version:

Update to Scratch File Purge Policy

To help alleviate recent storage stress on our scratch filesystem, we will be changing the purge period for scratch files from 90 days to 60 days. This means that any files not accessed within 60 days will be deleted. We invite you to share your comments or concerns during the public comment period, which will remain open until August 3. Please submit your feedback via https://www.osc.edu/resources/technical_support/supercomputing-policies/proposed_osc_policies_for_public_comments.

Action Requested - Free Up Space on OSC's Scratch Filesystem

The OSC Scratch filesystem (/fs/scratch) is currently under significant space pressure. To address this, OSC is preparing a proposed policy update that would reduce the default data retention period on Scratch. Under the current policy, we may need to implement a one-time emergency reduction in retention time to free up space. To help avoid this, we are asking all clients to *voluntarily delete any unneeded data* from Scratch as soon as possible. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated and will help maintain system stability for everyone.

System Downtime August 19 2025

A downtime for OSC HPC systems is scheduled from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday, August 19 2025. The downtime will affect the Pitzer, Cardinal and Ascend Clusters, web portals, the state-wide licenses and HPC file servers. MyOSC (the client portal) will be available during the downtime. In preparation for the downtime, the batch scheduler will not start jobs that cannot be completed before 7 a.m., August 19. Jobs that are not started on clusters will be held until after the downtime and then started once the system is returned to production status.

Using Software on Pitzer RHEL 7

While OSC has upgraded the Pitzer cluster to RHEL 9, you may encounter difficulties when migrating jobs from RHEL 7 to the new system. To help you continue your research, we provide a containerized RHEL 7 environment on Pitzer RHEL 9. This container replicates the original RHEL 7 system and software environment used on Pitzer.

Important: Multi-node MPI jobs are not supported in this containerized environment due to incompatibilities between the host and the container.

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