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

[Paul Edmon]

We have an automated script, pcull which goes through and finds abusing 
processes:

https://github.com/fasrc/pcull

-Paul Edmon-


On 02/15/2018 10:25 AM, Patrick Goetz wrote:
> 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
>