[Halld_src] Fw: GlueX preparations for possible disruption of JLab operations

[Alexander Somov]

________________________________
From: GlueX-Collaboration <gluex-collaboration-bounces at jlab.org> on behalf of Justin Stevens via GlueX-Collaboration <gluex-collaboration at jlab.org>
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2025 4:50 PM
To: GlueX Collaboration <gluex-collaboration at jlab.org>
Subject: [GlueX] GlueX preparations for possible disruption of JLab operations

Dear Collaborators,

As we discussed at the bi-weekly meeting last week on Thursday, due to the US government shutdown, JLab is preparing for significantly limiting operations as soon as the end of this week, Friday, October 24.  This has the direct impact of furloughing staff at JLab who are critical to our research and we need to be sensitive to the stress and uncertainty this puts on them and their families.

While we don’t have specific instructions from lab management, as a Collaboration composed of both JLab staff and Users we need to prepare for the possibility of a prolonged shutdown to keep our research moving forward.  It’s clear that Users will not have physical access to the lab during this time, but we also don’t know what aspects of the computing infrastructure will be available.  In the worst case we should prepare for the following as soon as this Friday:

  *   No ssh access to the computing cluster (ifarm)
  *   No FTP/globus access to the disk storage to transfer files
  *   No access to webpages hosted on halldweb.jlab.org (Wiki, DocDB, etc.)

With this scenario in mind, we recommend that you move software, data files, etc. necessary for continuing to make progress on data analysis from JLab to your home institution.  This may include the following actions:

  *   Copying analysis scripts, code, etc.
  *   Copying analysis ROOT tree files for data and simulation
  *   Pushing local git commits to remote repositories
  *   Downloading the sqlite files for CCDB and RCDB

The recommended method of transferring files from JLab is using Globus https://jlab.servicenowservices.com/scicomp?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0014843

If you have limited storage space for these files at your institution, Richard Jones has offered to store files for collaborators on a disk at UConn with remote access.  To make use of this, please prepare a list of files/directories you would like to transfer and Richard will be providing documentation on how to initiate those transfers.  Please reach out to Richard and I if you have questions about this.

In particular, for students working towards dissertations and analyses which are preparing for publication, please make sure you retrieve the files you need from the JLab cluster this week and let us know where we can help.

It will be important for us to continue communicating during a shutdown, which we’ll do in the following ways:

  *   Email: the Mailman server we use for most email lists is hosted at JLab and may not be accessible.  If that is the case, we still have the emails of all collaboration members and will communicate regularly with you by email with important announcements and information
  *   Slack: this messaging service is not hosted at JLab and should be accessible.  If you aren’t using it already, please signup https://jlab12gev.slack.com/signup and join the #halld channel to communicate with other collaborators
  *   Zoom: all our regular meetings are hosted on jlab-org.zoomgov.com  In case that is not available, we will provide alternative Zoom links for meetings from university hosts and share those by slack and email
  *   Webpages: we are preparing a static Docker image of the Wiki and DocDB, which should have access to much of our documentation.  It will be large, ~100 GB, but should contain all the relevant files you would normally find on the web

It is also expected that the start of the next run in 2026 may be significantly delayed by this shutdown, so we will wait until the revised experimental schedule is known before allocating shifts.  We still aim to provide as much lead time as possible for collaborators planning travel for shifts, but please understand that it will take some time for this situation to be resolved.

Finally, I understand there is a lot of uncertainty right now.  Please reach out to me to communicate particular challenges or issues you foresee with this plan or other aspects of a prolonged shutdown.  We’ve weathered significant challenges as a collaboration in the past and I’m confident that we’ll do that again now.

-Justin

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