Mailing Lists and Requesting Help

Help and Mailing List FAQs

• Request access to the MS Teams group. If you are external to GT, please send us a ticket to add you.
  • We also have a CRNCH RG Slack workspace here if you have trouble connecting to Teams. Most of the Lucata discussion currently uses this Slack. Just note that since we are on a free plan that old conversations are not saved.
• How to use the help ticket webform at www.crnch.gatech.edu/crnch-rg-help
• The main CRNCH help ticket email address is crnch-rg-help@cc.gatech.edu. We would prefer if you use the webform but the email address is ok if you include your GT username (e.g., gburdell3 for George Burdell).

Help for the CRNCH Rogues Gallery

The Rogues Gallery testbed is rapidly growing along with its support structures. In general, we try to respond to help tickets within 1 business day of your request. Note that the admins and researchers for this project work 9-6 ET Monday-Friday, so any requests outside of this timeframe will be delayed at least until the next business day. Tickets submitted over the weekend or on any GT holidays will be evaluated on the following business day. Please note that Georgia Tech is officially closed for the last week of each calendar year for the Christmas holiday.

How do I request help?

The Rogues Gallery uses a Request Tracker (RT) based ticketing system. You can submit tickets ideally via the webform or alternatively using the email address, crnch-rg-help@cc.gatech.edu. We would request that you submit a help ticket for anything that is not a discussion or minor clarification question. This helps us track specific issues for users and also is important as a metric for our funded testbed project.

That said, the general process for asking for help is:

1. Check through the appropriate documentation on the public documentation or the internal wiki to see if this answers your question.
2. Ask a clarification question in the related MS Teams group. For example, if you are working with Alveo boards you may want to post your question in the fpga-xilinx channel on Teams.
   • Alternatively, if you are not able to use Teams you can post your question on the related mailing list. So for Alveo boards, this would be crnch-rg-reconfig@lists.gatech.edu
3. During discussion on the Teams or email group we may move your question to the ticketing system or a private conversation if it is specific to your account. When possible, we’d like to keep most discussion in the appropriate channel as it provides a good reference for other users who may have the same issue.
   • Submit tickets to the crnch-rg-help@cc.gatech.edu email address or ideally via the webform at https://crnch.gatech.edu/crnch-rg-help
4. As you get to more in-depth research, you may need to pose your question to an external vendor since most architectures in RG are very new and GT researchers and staff are constantly learning along with you. More information on specific vendor forums can be found from this link.

How do I ask a good question?

This is not meant to be a put down! Asking your question in a clear and meaningful way is the easiest way to get assistance. We generally recommend the following for asking a clear suggestion:

1. Share the machine name you are having issues with: Ex: “Python notebooks don’t run on rg-neuro-dev.crnch.gatech.edu”
2. If possible, share the output using quotes or an attached log file. Please share output as text where possible instead of a screenshot!. If we are trying to recreate a problem you have it is much easier to copy and paste text than decipher it from a screenshot.
3. Create a “minimum working/reproducible example” (MWE/MRE). In many cases, sharing a huge log file for a full application is not useful to you or to the maintainers of a particular system. See this page on creating an effective MWE: MWE overview
4. Don’t just state “Feature X doesn’t work!”. We’ll ask you more follow-up questions so it’s best to share more detail initially to get your question answered in a prompt fashion.

Rogues Gallery Mailing Lists and Teams Group

There are mailing lists for general user notifications and updates as well as sub-lists for each large area of research within the Rogues Gallery testbed infrastructure.

Please note that the MS Teams group for CRNCH Rogues Gallery may be the quickest way to post questions. However, the GT “SYMPA” mailing lists can also be used for discussion and will be used for subarea-specific announcements.

Mailing lists

To subscribe/unsubscribe from a mailing list please use this SYMPA FAQ page. Note that most lists are closed to external users.

• crnch-rg-users@lists.gatech.edu - general user list. Mainly used for announcements and very high-level discussion.
• crnch-rg-fpga@lists.gatech.edu - Discussion of FPGA and reconfigurable computing
• crnch-rg-nearmem@lists.gatech.edu - Discussion of the Emu system and near-memory computing hardware like HBM, HMC, and NVDIMM
• crnch-rg-networking@lists.gatech.edu - Discussion of in-network computing, FPGA networking, and edge computing/5G
• crnch-rg-neuro-sysml@lists.gatech.edu - Discussion of neuromorphic computing and systems for machine learning
• crnch-rg-quantum@lists.gatech.edu - Discussion of quantum computing

Vendor Forums

If we can’t answer your question via chat, we may direct you to the relevant vendor forum for more assistance. See a list of related vendors here.