Services News
Connect Portal Help forms: https://ri.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/help/
Current RI Services’ Status
Planned overnight network outages 5th and 6th October
Two short campus-wide network outages are expected to be carried out by the IT Services network team at 18:00 – 23:30 on both the 05/10/2026 and 06/10/2026.
As such, active connections to CSF login nodes, and iCSF, may terminate during the outage. However, jobs running in the CSF batch system are expected to be unaffected.
If you have Research Data Storage mounted on your PC/laptop (e.g., as an R-drive in Windows), then it may need to be remounted after the outage (map network drive).
Recent activities
CSF3 availability – Friday 25 September 2026, 10:30 – RESOLVED
CSF3 is available for login following an outage at 09:00. Jobs are running, but please check your own job queue and outputs.
CSF scratch issue/drained nodes – Friday 18th September 2026 – RESOLVED
There was an overnight issue with the scratch storage from ~2100 on 17th September until 0945 on 18th September, which caused a number of jobs to fail and nodes to drain.
If you had a job running in the above timespan, you should check your outputs for errors.
CSF3 Maintenance – Mon 7th–Thurs 10th September – COMPLETED 15:35
Further detailed information about the work that has taken place and the status of the CSF3 can be found on the dedicated maintenance webpage.
CSF4 – 18th September 2026 – RETIRED, AS ADVERTISED
The CSF4 service has now been retired, and access has been permanently disabled.
Other important IT News Announcements
Other login issues to Research Infrastructure Services?
Please first check above for any system-specific or University-wide issues that may have occurred.
Can’t Login – “Account Locked” Message?
An “Account Locked” message is NOT a problem with the CSF. It is caused by your central IT user account being locked due to too many login attempts to other systems with an incorrect password.
A common cause is when users change their UoM IT password. If you didn’t log out of an email app on your phone before changing your UoM IT password, it could still be using your old password. You’ll need to sign out of the app and sign in again. If the app has made too many incorrect login attempts, your IT account may be locked, which will then prevent your CSF login from working.
If you saved your password in an app such as MobaXterm, VSCode or WinSCP, then it may still be trying to login with your old password. You’ll need to remove the password from these apps (we recommend that you don’t save passwords in apps.)
You will need to contact the IT Help Desk to have your IT account unlocked – Research IT CANNOT do this for you.
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CSF Updates
Permanent notice: Scratch files over THREE months old being deleted
Scratch is not intended for long-term storage of files. Files not accessed for THREE months or more are deleted. All users should regularly tidy up their scratch files to avoid data loss. Full details about the policy.
If you have any questions about this policy, please contact us via the HPC Help form
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iCSF Updates:
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RVMS Updates:
None.
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