Make syncing of restart directories to /g/data standard

[rmholmes]

Given the new scratch file expiry limits, I suggest that the sync_data.sh script be altered to automatically sync restarts, as well as outputs, to /g/data to avoid losing them all if you forget to do it by hand.

[aekiss]

Agreed - this has been on my back burner for a while. Would need to specify two sync paths so we can store restarts somewhere different from the outputs that the cookbook syncs.

[aekiss]

This would also require a rethink of how the payu driver, collation and sync script interoperate.

• At present the sync script is run in parallel with model runs and collation, so it only syncs collated .nc files.
• Payu doesn't automatically collate the most recent restart when collate: restart: true in config.yaml, only the one prior to that (this is so the model can run immediately without waiting for restarts to collate, but this is less likely to be a problem now we're using mppnccombine-fast).
• Therefore final restart of an experiment doesn't get automatically collated so would never be auto-synced, despite being the most important one to save

In practice I've manually collated restarts at the conclusion of an experiment (using payu collate -d archive/restart<num>) and then submitted the sync_data.sh sync script (with SYNCDIR set to the restart destination).

It is not uncommon to have collation failures in restarts and outputs, so at the end of an experiment it's a good idea to collate any uncollated files and re-sync.

[aidanheerdegen]

I've been meaning to make a payu issue for this, because it should be included in payu.

I think it would also be easier to do this way, with access to all the important run information.

[rmholmes]

Would need to specify two sync paths so we can store restarts somewhere different from the outputs that the cookbook syncs.

I feel that it would be much easier if outputs and restarts were in the same folder, as they are already in the job directory archive. I've been syncing my restarts for the ERA-5 runs across to the same directory in ik11. To avoid this causing problems with the cookbook - can't we just tell the cookbook not to look at anything within a folder starting with restart*/?

[aidanheerdegen]

An advantage to there being so many open issues on the payu repo, often there is already an issue to cover your use case, and voila!

payu-org/payu#200