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Tool and software are the responsibility of each individual researcher; this is important for you to ensure your own computational reproducibility. That being said, we have some general help to get your started in the following pages.

Software Usage Policy for Hyak Users

User Responsibility and Useful Information

Hyak is a shared research environment designed to provide computational resources for a broad range of users. To ensure the system functions efficiently for all, the following software usage policy outlines the responsibilities of researchers utilizing Hyak:

Shared Research Environment - Hyak is a multi-user platform, and its resources are shared among all users. To maintain optimal performance, the software environment is managed to accommodate the needs of the majority of users.

Baseline Environment - The provided user environment consists of a baseline of commonly used tools and libraries. This baseline is selected based on what serves the broadest number of users effectively. Hyak provides some pre-installed software modules for tools common across broad user groups and complex to install. These are made available to streamline setup and ensure consistency across the research environment.

No Root/Sudo Access - To maintain system security and stability, users do not have root or sudo access. Administrative privileges are reserved for system administrators.

Researcher Responsibility - Because researchers are also responsible for ensuring that their research workflows, including the software they install, are reproducible, research computing Hyak users are thus responsible for installing, managing, and maintaining any software or tools necessary for their specific research projects that are not part of the baseline environment.

Support and Documentation - Assistance with software-related issues is available through the Hyak help desk and ticketing system (email help@uw.edu with “Hyak” in the subject line). Documentation on using the system and supported software is provided to help researchers resolve common issues.

By adhering to this policy, the Hyak team and its users help maintain a productive and efficient shared computing environment for everyone.