I'm thinking of setting up multi user nix on a compute cluster. The advantage would be to have a shared storage where common packages are reused, this is a great advantage compared to conda where every environment duplicates storage and inodes.

However, the packages are installed as root. As such I'm a bit wary of whether a user installing something could have the system run malware as root by installing a package.

What are the safeguards in place and how do I know I can trust them?

Hello, I will soon have to setup a small GPU HPC cluster with few servers. It is not something I have ever done, I did setup servers and manage them but not sometof this scale with several users.

I've been looking at plausible alternatives and I am looking at openhpc, Ansible and NixOs.

Out of the three I feel like NixOs could be a good choice to have the configuration clearly stored somewhere. I won't be actively maintaining the cluster at all times and find it nice that if someone needs some software I can point them to the configuration and tell them to modify it and then just update the system.

On the other hand I appreciate how openhpc is designed for that and definitely does support all use cases we need.

Ansible seems like an in between option.

Do you have advice on this choice? I read that NixOs can have problems with cuda drivers and custom compiled software, which would definitely be a deal breaker.

I found some HPC do use NixOs but it is definitely not a widespread option. Thus I'm a bit afraid I won't be easily able to find solutions to problems I may encounter.

Hello, I'm looking for a simple collaborative text editor. We do have an office 365 subscription and it works, but the 10 minutes loading time every time you open a document are taking a strain on my mental sanity.

We don't need nothing too fancy, markdown support would be a plus, especially with embedded latex formulas and possibly bibfile references.

The things I really need are a simple ways to add comments to text and a changes view to immediately see what a collaborator modified.

I've been taking a look at hackmd, it kind of fulfills the role, but the pricing is a bit high for the features available.

Could be self hosted too, but to be fair I'd rather not have to maintain it.

I work on an HPC and often I have to share files with other users. The most approachable solution is to have an external cloud storage and recline back and forth. However there's some projects that are quite heavy (several TB) and that is unfeasible. We do not have a shared group. The following is the only solution I found which is not to just set al permissions to 777, and I still don't like it.

Create a directory and set ACL to give access to the selected users. This works fine if the users create new files in there, but it does not work if they copy from somewhere else as default umask is 022. Thus the only appropriate solution is to change default umask to 002, which however affects file creation system wide. The alternative is to change permissions every time you copy something, but you all know very well that is not going to happen.

Does it really have to be such a pain in the ass?

Around where I live there are a few patches of Alkekengi officinalis. I like the fruit very much and I like to go pick it, however those patches are quite a bit far from where I live. Since the plant spreads quite fast, I was thinking of planting some more nearby. I have checked local laws and it is not considered an alien species, so that spreading it is allowed. Do you have advice on how to effectively spread it in the wild? What locations may result in good survival and whether it is better to transplant the ryzhomes or to plant the seeds?

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