[slurm-users] '--x11' or no '--x11' when using srun when both methods work for X11 graphical applications

[Kevin Manalo]

Hello SLURM users?,

I was reviewing the X11 documentation

https://slurm.schedmd.com/faq.html#terminal
https://slurm.schedmd.com/faq.html#x11

15. Can tasks be launched with a remote terminal?
In Slurm version 1.3 or higher, use srun's --pty option. Until then, you can accomplish this by starting an appropriate program or script. In the simplest case (X11 over TCP with the DISPLAY environment already set), executing srun xterm may suffice.

At our site, indeed this is sufficient.  We are using the  https://github.com/hautreux/slurm-spank-x11 plugin currently.

I see that  in the 17.11.0 announcement

  -- X11 support is now fully integrated with the main Slurm code.
Remove any
     X11 plugin configured in your plugstack.conf file to avoid errors being
     logged about conflicting options.

Questions


  1.  If 'srun -x11' is not needed to X11 forward (the simplest case works), do we encourage users to use it?  I'm more in need of understanding how it works because some users use it, some do not, and more education on this would be great.
  2.  Is the SLURM spank x11 plugin now unnecessary once we build 17.11.0 with the updated configuration?

Thanks,
Kevin

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