[slurm-users] X11 forwarding and VNC?

[Marcus Wagner]

Hi Loris,

I know, it has been some time, but I have one additional remark.
If you just use ssh -X to login to the nodes, you will have a plain ssh 
session, which means, none of SLURMs environment variables will be set.
So if your X11-Jobs are in need of that, you will have to use X11 
forwarding through SLURM.

Best
Marcus


On 3/29/19 7:45 PM, Marcus Wagner wrote:
> Hi Loris,
>
> Am 29.03.2019 um 14:01 schrieb Loris Bennett:
>> Hi Marcus,
>>
>> Marcus Wagner <wagner at itc.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
>>
>>> Hi Loris,
>>>
>>> On 3/25/19 1:42 PM, Loris Bennett wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 3. salloc works fine too without --x11, subsequent srun with a x11 
>>>>> app works great
>>>> Doing 'salloc' followed by 'ssh -X'  works for us too, which is 
>>>> surprising to me.
>>>>
>>>> This last option currently seems to me to be the best option for 
>>>> users,
>>>> being slightly less confusing than logging into the login node again
>>>> from the login node, which is our current workaround.
>>>>
>>>> Still, it's all a bit odd.
>>>
>>> I assume, you use pam_slurm_adopt?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>>> Then it is clear, that this is working and has nothing to do with 
>>> the x11
>>> forwarding feature of slurm. This is plain ssh X11-forwarding in 
>>> this case.
>>
>> OK, I  see that, but if I don't need --x11 with salloc, what is it
>> for?  Just to control to control on which nodes forwarding is done
>> viz. --x11[=<all|first|last>]?  What might be a use-case for not having
>> X11 forwarding for all the nodes, which is the default?
>>
>
> The default is (according to the manpage) 'batch', which means the 
> node, where the batchscript will be executed (the first of the 
> allocation, I think).
> I do not know what first or last should be intended.
> In fact I do not have a use case for x11-forwarding to all nodes, 
> might have to think a little bit more about that one.
>
>>> Please keep in mind, that processes started with an adopted ssh 
>>> session are in
>>> the jobs cgroup (good), but are accounted in the 'extern' step of 
>>> the job.
>>>
>>> e.g.
>>> * sbatch --wrap "sleep 10m"
>>> * ssh to compute-node
>>> * do some work in the compute node
>>> after job is done
>>> * sacct -j <jobid> -o JobID,JobName,MaxRSS,CPUTime,TotalCPU
>>>         JobID    JobName     MaxRSS    CPUTime   TotalCPU
>>> ------------ ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
>>> 1053837            wrap              00:01:42  02:00.159
>>> 1053837.bat+      batch       412K   00:01:43  00:00.158
>>> 1053837.ext+     extern    543880K   00:01:42  02:00.001
>>
>> That's interesting, although is there any advantage/difference compared
>> with just doing
>>
>>    srun --x11 --pty bash
>>
>> ?
> With
> srun --x11 --pty bash
> the accounting will be in the batch step of the job, that is the only 
> difference I'm aware of at the moment.
> With LSF we used that kind of mechanism to start e.g. vtune directly 
> out of the job. Without the X11-Forwarding feature of Slurm you would 
> have to salloc some hosts and then ssh to the nodes with x11 
> forwarding enabled to then start vtune.
> So it is a little bit more to do for the user if you do not do 
> X11-Forwarding the SLURM style.
>
>
> Best
> Marcus
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Loris
>>
>

-- 
Marcus Wagner, Dipl.-Inf.

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