Skip to content

M3 Admin Guide (Project Leaders)

This page is for mh42 project leaders — anyone with supervisor or admin responsibilities over the shared storage. Students do not need to read this.

The Core Rule: Supervisors Create Project Folders

Never let students create the project folder at the mh42 root. Students only create their stack_{name}/ folder inside a project folder that already exists.

Why this matters: setfacl (the tool that gives leaders permanent access to student data) requires you to own the directory. Group write permission is not enough. If a student creates the project folder, leaders cannot set default ACLs on it without helpdesk intervention.

Setting Up a New Project Folder

Run this immediately after creating each new project folder:

# 1. Create the project folder (supervisor does this, not the student)
mkdir /fs04/mh42/{project_folder}

# 2. Set default ACLs for all active leaders
#    danak must always be included — she is the permanent PI
setfacl -d -m u:danak:rwx /fs04/mh42/{project_folder}/
setfacl -d -m u:lmen0023:rwx /fs04/mh42/{project_folder}/
setfacl -d -m u:kkatuwan:rwx /fs04/mh42/{project_folder}/

# 3. Verify the ACL was set
getfacl /fs04/mh42/{project_folder}/

What default ACL does: The -d flag makes the ACL a template. Every file and subdirectory a student creates inside automatically inherits an entry giving the listed leaders full access — no student cooperation required, even after they graduate.

Always include danak

Dana Kulic (danak) is the permanent PI and will outlast any postdoc or student leader. Always include her in the default ACL. Other leaders (postdocs, co-supervisors) may leave — danak will not.

Confirmed working on M3's Lustre

setfacl with default ACLs is confirmed working on /fs04/mh42 (Lustre filesystem, tested 2026-05-02). Inheritance propagates correctly to both subdirectories and files. The effective permission on files is rw- (execute bit masked automatically — this is correct).

Checking for Non-Standard Root Items

Run this periodically (e.g. start of each semester) to catch students who dropped files in the wrong place:

for item in /fs04/mh42/*; do
    name=$(basename "$item")
    if ! echo "$name" | grep -qE \
        '^FYP[0-9]+S[12]_[0-9]+$|^PhD_[0-9]+_|^Postdoc_[0-9]+_|^Staff_|^scripts$|^0_mh42_README_START_HERE\.md$|^PROJECTS\.md$'; then
        echo "NON-STANDARD: $name  (owner: $(stat -c '%U' "$item"), modified: $(stat -c '%y' "$item" | cut -d' ' -f1))"
    fi
done

Non-standard items cannot be moved by leaders (Lustre restricts renaming items owned by other users, even with group write on the parent). To reorganize them, email help@massive.org.au with the exact mv commands — this is a zero-space-cost rename, processed quickly.

Fixing Folders You Don't Own

If a student created the project folder themselves (so you can't set ACLs), options are:

  1. Email helpdesk — ask them to chown the project folder to you, then set the ACLs yourself
  2. Ask the student — if they still have access, ask them to run setfacl -d -m u:danak:rwx on their project folder
  3. Ask the student to chmod — chmod -R g+rwX stack_{name}/ as offboarding requirement opens group read+write to all mh42 members, including leaders

Storage Policy Enforcement

The mh42 project quota is 500 GB shared and cannot be increased. As project leader you have the authority to:

  • Move or archive stale data without prior notice (per the storage policy in the README)
  • Contact students whose data is non-standard, stale, or oversized
  • Request scratch2 quota increases at tinyurl.com/massive-m3-quota-request (3 TB default, can increase; allow up to 2 weeks)

Priority cleanup targets (largest space consumers): - Apptainer .sif container images — share one per team instead of per-student copies - Conda environments — students often duplicate base installs - kit_cache/, kit_data/ folders inside Isaac Sim installs — regeneratable caches, safe to delete

Archiving to S Drive: when project quota is tight, archive completed runs to S:\ENG-ECSE\Robotics-M3 via the S Drive guide.

Helpdesk Contact

For operations that require root (moving other users' files, chown, quota changes):