Ownership of data and the rights to use project storage

NSC’s position is that computing time and project storage are allocated to the project by NAISS, and that NAISS has authorized the PI to decide who gets to be a member in the project, and how much computing and storage resources each member may use.

In order to manage the project storage, the project PI (or someone designated by the PI, e.g the SUPR “Proxy for the PI”) can therefore get assistance from NSC with the following:

• See how much storage space is used by each project member.
• Read the contents of any directories/files within the project storage directory (e.g to determine what type of data is stored if it should be kept).
• Delete any data within the project storage directory (e.g to free up space used by unwanted files owned by inactive users).
• Change ownership and file permissions of any data within the project directory (e.g to take ownership of still-relevant files from inactive users).

We strongly encourage PI:s to talk to project members before deleting or changing the ownership of their data.

Please note that NSC considers this to be unrelated to the intellectual property rights of the actual file contents. This just concerns the rights to store and organize bits and bytes on disk.

When a user is removed from a project, files in the project directory owned by that user are not automatically removed. It is up to the project PI to decide if the files should be kept on disk or not.

A user’s home directory is considered to be personal and not connected to any project. NSC will not allow PI:s to delete or view contents from the home directory without permission from the user. Home directories of users no longer active at NSC will eventually be deleted.

Access to data you once created in a project directory you no longer has access to

This situation most often happens when a project ends and the project directory is taken over by a new project. Users who are not added to the new project will then lose access to the project directory after 60 days.

There are three ways to regain access to such data:

1 - the normal route - get added to the new project

1) Find out which projects owns the project directory now. In most cases the PI of the old project will know. If you can’t find out, NSC Support can help you. 2) Request membership in that project through SUPR (or ask the PI to login to SUPR and add you). 3) Once added to the project, wait 20 minutes and then login again to the cluster. You should now have access to the project directory. 4) Copy or move your data to another location. 5) If you will not continue to use the project, the PI can now remove you from the project (from SUPR).

NOTE: if the project is a storage-only project (most projects with an allocation larger than 500 GiB are storage-only projects), membership in it will not automatically open your Tetralith or Sigma account if it has already been closed. To reopen the account, you either need to become a member of a compute project, or contact NSC Support to have your account unlocked for a limited time (as long as it takes to copy or move data, usually a week or two).

2 - if the PI does not want to add you to the new project

If the PI for some reason does not want to add you to the project, but agree to letting you copy or move the data:

1) Ask the PI to send an email to NSC Support where he/she clearly requests that NSC copies or moves certain files. Please note that this request need to be very explicit so NSC can interpret it correctly. Examples: “NSC, please move /proj/someproj/users/x_abcde to a location where x_abcde can access it”, “NSC, please copy /proj/someproj/datasets/D208 to somewhere where x_abcde can access it”. Saying “give x_abcde access to his files” is not clear enough, since there might be files owned by that user scattered throughout the project directory. 2) NSC moves or copies the data to a directory you can access.

NOTE: For technical reasons NSC cannot give a user access to only his/her own files in a project directory, it’s all or nothing.

3 - if the PI refuse to give you access to the data altogether

If the project PI does not agree to let you have access to the data, we have a non-technical problem. So far this has only happened once. The solution might involve getting your local university to make a decision, or get Linköping University’s legal team involved. Please get in touch with NSC Support if this happens, and we will try to advice you on how to proceed.

Data on NSC Centre Storage is not public and not archived

SNIC’s interpretation¹ of Swedish law is that data on Centre Storage is not public (“allmänna handlingar”).

This also means that NSC is not required to archive data stored on Centre Storage.