Preventing Your Programs From Overrunning Our Computers

INTRO

As part of being a Computer Science student, you will no doubt create and run your own programs on our CS Linux Systems You also might be downloading programs from elsewhere and running then on our systems as well.
It's possible that software you write (or software you've downloaded and run) could, when running, exceed the existing resources on our systems.

Computing System Resources That Could Be Exceeded

  • Memory (RAM)
  • CPU (processing power)
  • Disk space
    • Ugrad users have a disk quota to prevent that.
    • Diskspace does not only include your home directory, but can also include your use of the Linux systems's /tmp directory.

Typical Symptoms Of Exceeded Computer Resources

  • Timeouts ssh'ing into the computer.
  • Programs run much slower than usual
  • Programs stop running because they run out of RAM or swap disk space.

Who Is Affected When Your Program Uses Up Resources On One Of Our Linux Systems?

Because all our our CS Linux computers are multiuser systems, programs that exceed the computer's resources, slowing down the system, could potentially affect all the users logged into those systems, remotely, or at the actual computer console.
Exceeding the computer's resources could also affect programs running in the background, perhaps as part of the computer's own system software or other users' batch jobs.
So... always be aware that you are not necessarily the only one logged into a system when you're running your own programs.

Tips To Prevent Your Programs From Exceeding The System Resources On Our Computers

  • Try to avoid using the system's complete RAM memory as much as possible. Put safeguards into your programs to monitor your use of memory.
  • Try to run your programs during low-demand times of day (mornings, mostly; late evenings are the most busy.)
  • Try not to tie up the computer's resources for longer than the program needs to run.
Do not forget that you are running programs. One of the biggest areas we've had issues with is that some users start their programs in the background and forget that the programs are still running. And in some cases, the programs have issues and start using more resources than actually needed.
Therefore... please make sure you check in on your running programs often, and use monitoring tools to make sure you are not exceeding resources.

Monitoring Your Processes' Memory and CPU Usage

Use the top or htop programs to see your program's stats.
        • top -u username
        • htop -u username or htop --user=username

And Worth Mentioning Again...

Again, please remember that because these are multiuser systems, other users could be logged into the system and could be affected if your program exceeds the computer's resources.