[slurm-users] Re: How can we put limits on interactive jobs?

Hello,

we also do it this way, by checking if job_desc.script is empty. I have no idea if this is foolproof in any way (and use cases like, say, someone starting a Jupyter or RStudio instance via script are not covered), but hopefully, users who are inventive enough to find ways around this are also receptive enough to accept more reasonable and robust solutions for their workflows. Aside from setting a reasonable time limit, I'd say the most important limitation to steer users away from overusing interactive jobs is enforcing (either via partition or via QoS) that only one interactive job per user  can be running at any given time.

Cheers, René

Am 25.04.25 um 11:37 schrieb Ewan Roche via slurm-users:

Hello Ole, the way I identify interactive jobs is by checking that the script is empty in job_submit.lua.

If it's the case then they're assigned to an interactive QoS that limits the time and resources as well as only allowing one job per user.

     if job_desc.script == nil or job_desc.script == '' then

         slurm.log_info("slurm_job_submit: jobscript is missing, assuming interactive job")
         slurm.log_user("Launching an interactive job")

         if job_desc.partition == "gpu" then
             job_desc.qos = "gpu_interactive"
         end

         if job_desc.partition == "cpu" then
             job_desc.qos = "cpu_interactive"
         end

         return slurm.SUCCESS

Thanks

Ewan

-----Original Message----- From: Ole Holm Nielsen via slurm-users slurm-users@lists.schedmd.com Sent: Freitag, 25. April 2025 11:15 To: slurm-users@schedmd.com Subject: [slurm-users] How can we put limits on interactive jobs?

We would like to put limits on interactive jobs (started by salloc) so that users don't leave unused interactive jobs behind on the cluster by mistake.

I can't offhand find any configurations that limit interactive jobs, such as enforcing a timelimit.

Perhaps this could be done in job_submit.lua, but I couldn't find any job_desc parameters in the source code which would indicate if a job is interactive or not.

Question: How do people limit interactive jobs, or identify orphaned jobs and kill them?

Thanks a lot, Ole

-- Ole Holm Nielsen PhD, Senior HPC Officer Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark

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