[slurm-users] Slurm commands for launching tasks: salloc and sbatch

[Mike Mikailov]

Thank you Loris, for the further feedback. 

“Reasonable” for SGE is within a few minutes, would be nice if it could be adjusted. 

Still interactive means the user has almost immediate access to the system, not queued. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 5, 2023, at 9:43 AM, Loris Bennett <loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> 
> Mike Mikailov <mmikailov at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Thank you Loris, for the further clarifications. The only question is
>> who will wait forever in interactive mode? And how practical is it?
>> 
>> Interactive mode is what its name implies - interactive, not queueing.
> 
> To me, "interactive" is the alternative to "batch" - queueing happens
> with both.  Whether I submit an interactive job or a batch job, the job
> can only start if the requested resources are available and the job has
> a sufficiently high priority.
> 
> If you have enough nodes, you might be able to spare some to be
> essentially idle most of the time, so that jobs sent to these nodes
> will, in general, start quickly.  If you have a small cluster, this
> might not be an option. 
> 
>> It would make more sense if the default setting for deadline would be set to a reasonable time not indefinite in Slurm. 
> 
> One person's "reasonable" may be another person's "ridiculously long".
> A "reasonable time" may even vary for the same person depending on the
> circumstances.  If you submit an interactive job before lunch, you might
> be prepared to wait longer than if the building is going to close in 30
> minutes and you will have to leave.  With '--deadline' you can decide
> case by case.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Loris
> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>>> On Jul 5, 2023, at 1:43 AM, Loris Bennett <loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Mike Mikailov <mmikailov at gmail.com> writes:
>>> 
>>>> About the last point. In the case of sbatch the jobs wait in the
>>>> queue as long as it takes until the resources are available. In the
>>>> case of interactive jobs
>>>> (at least using Son of Grid Engine) they fail after a short time if no resources available. 
>>> 
>>> But you were referring to 'salloc' and not something SGE does.  The
>>> default for 'salloc' is to wait indefinitely.  You can change this
>>> behaviour with the option '--deadline':
>>> 
>>>  --deadline=<OPT>
>>>          remove the job if no ending is possible before this deadline
>>>          (start > (deadline - time[-min])).  Default is no deadline.
>>>          Valid time formats are:
>>>          HH:MM[:SS] [AM|PM]
>>>          MMDD[YY] or MM/DD[/YY] or MM.DD[.YY]
>>>          MM/DD[/YY]-HH:MM[:SS]
>>>          YYYY-MM-DD[THH:MM[:SS]]]
>>>          now[+count[seconds(default)|minutes|hours|days|weeks]]
>>> 
>>> [snip (36 lines)]
>>>> 
>>>> Queuing system  No  Yes  
>>>> 
>>>> I am not sure what you mean with the last point, since 'salloc' is also
>>>> handled by the queueing system.  If the resources requested are
>>>> currently not available, 'salloc' will wait until they are.
>>> 
>>> [snip (42 lines)]
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Dr. Loris Bennett (Herr/Mr)
>>> ZEDAT, Freie Universität Berlin
>>> 
> -- 
> Dr. Loris Bennett (Herr/Mr)
> ZEDAT, Freie Universität Berlin
>