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Troubleshooting

Sherlock is a resource for research, and as such, it is in perpetual evolution, as hardware, applications, libraries, and modules are added, updated, and/or modified on a regular basis. Sometimes issues can appear where none existed before. When you find something missing or a behavior that seems odd, please let us know.

How to submit a support request#

Google it first!

When encountering issues with software, if the misbehavior involves an error message, the first step should always be to look up the error message online. There's a good chance somebody stumbled upon the same hurdles before, and may even provide some fix or workaround.

One of the most helpful Google searches is your_application sbatch. For example if you're having trouble submitting jobs or allocating resources (CPUs, time, memory) with Cell Ranger, search for cell ranger sbatch to see how others have successfully run your application on a cluster.

If you're facing issues you can't figure out, we're here to help. Feel free to email us at srcc-support@stanford.edu, but please keep the following points in mind to ensure a timely and relevant response to your support requests.

Please provide relevant information

We need to understand the issue you're facing, and in most cases, we need to be able to reproduce it, so it could be diagnosed and addressed. Please make sure to provide enough information so we could help you in the best possible way.

This typically involves providing the following information:

  • your SUNet ID,
  • some context about your problem (were you submitting a job, copying a file, compiling an application?),
  • if relevant, the full path to the files involved in your question or problem,
  • the name of node where you received the error (usually displayed in your command-line prompt),
  • the command(s) you ran, and/or the job submission script(s) you used,
  • the relevant job ID(s),
  • the exact, entire error message (or trace) you received.

Error messages are critical

This is very important. Without proper error messages, there is nothing we can do to help. And "it doesn't work" is not a proper error message. Also, please cut and paste the actual text of the output, commands, and error messages rather than screenshots in your tickets.
That way it is much easier for us to try to replicate your errors.

You can avoid email back and forth where we ask for all the relevant details, and thus delay the problem resolution, by providing all this information from the start. This will help us get to your problem immediately.