[slurm-users] How to deal with user running stuff in frontend node?

[Patrick Goetz]

The simple solution is to tell people not to do this -- that's what I 
do. And if that doesn't work threaten to kick them off the system.

On 02/15/2018 09:11 AM, Manuel Rodríguez Pascual wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Although this is not strictly related to Slurm, maybe you can recommend 
> me some actions to deal with a particular user.
> 
> On our small cluster, currently there are no limits to run applications 
> in the frontend. This is sometimes really useful for some users, for 
> example to have scripts monitoring the execution of jobs and taking 
> decisions depending on the partial results.
> 
> However, we have this user that keeps abusing this system: when the job 
> queue is long and there is a significant time wait, he sometimes runs 
> his jobs on the frontend, resulting on a CPU load of 100% and some 
> delays on using it for the things it is supposed to serve (user login, 
> monitoring and so).
> 
> Have you faced the same issue?  Is there any solution? I am thinking 
> about using ulimit to limit the execution time of this jobs in the 
> frontend to 5 minutes or so. This however does not look so elegant as 
> other users can perform the sabe abuse on the future, and he should also 
> be able to run low cpu-consuming jobs for a longer period. However I am 
> not an experienced sysadmin so I am completely open to suggestions or 
> different ways of facing this issue.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Manuel