Draft Policy for Off-Site DMT Use

The DMT is primarily an operational tool for automated status monitoring, debugging and fault diagnosis of the interferometer hardware. These functions are vital for the proper operation of the LIGO interferometers and must therefore have priority for ALL DMT resources, such as: Nevertheless, there are several uses for these resources by external (off-site) users that are acceptable and in most cases providing access for these uses becomes a necessity. The acceptable uses for DMT resources by off-site users include the following:
  1. Testing and diagnosing currently running equipment.
  2. Testing and debugging software that requires real-time data or data that is only  available on-line (e.g. the GDS test points).
  3. Testing and debugging software intended to be installed as a production monitor on a DMT server.
  4. System management of the GDS servers.
In the near term (the latter half of 1999), the major concerns are with the development and optimization of the monitoring software itself, so we can afford to be much more lenient in the distribution of accounts, and policing of processor load than will be the case in the future. As the data monitors become increasingly important for the operation of the installed equipment, the tolerance of casual use will decrease.

We intend to implement this policy in the following manner:

  • Accounts will be created for individuals working on projects that meet one or more of the criteria listed above. Contact Daniel Sigg or John Zweizig to get an account.
  • The DMT server is to be used for compiling and testing background monitors and running interactive tests and monitors software. The numerous other ancillary processes (E-Mail, Calendars, editors, Net browsers, etc) should be left on a General Computing (GC) host node. The following steps have been taken to support this working style:
  • the DMT user accounts have the same IDs as those of the GC user database.
  • The DMT home directories have been mounted as /opt/dmt/<user>  on one node (rainier) and will be exported to other GC nodes as needed.
  • Unnecessary executables (netscape, emacs, etc.) may be removed if they become a significant sink of resources.
  • Additional limitations may be placed on the use of DMT resources as they become necessary to assure that the primary monitoring functions will run without hindrance


  • Last Update: August 12, 1999
    Please send comment and suggestions to: John Zweizig