[slurm-users] What is an easy way to prevent users run programs on the master/login node.

[Timo Rothenpieler]

On 24.04.2021 04:37, Cristóbal Navarro wrote:
> Hi Community,
> I have a set of users still not so familiar with slurm, and yesterday 
> they bypassed srun/sbatch and just ran their CPU program directly on the 
> head/login node thinking it would still run on the compute node. I am 
> aware that I will need to teach them some basic usage, but in the 
> meanwhile, how have you solved this type of user-behavior problem? Is 
> there a preffered way to restrict the master/login resources, or 
> actions,  to the regular users ?
> 
> many thanks in advance
> -- 
> Cristóbal A. Navarro

I just put a drop-in config file for systemd into
/etc/systemd/system/user-.slice.d/user-limits.conf

> [Slice]
> CPUQuota=800%
> MemoryHigh=48G
> MemoryMax=56G
> MemorySwapMax=0

Accompanied by another drop-in that resets all those limits for root.

This enforces that no single user can use up all CPUs (limited to 8 
Hyperthreads) and RAM, and can't cause the system to swap.

Other than that, we leave it to the users due diligence to not trash up 
the login nodes, which so far worked fine.
They occasionally compile stuff on the login nodes in preparation of 
runs, so I don't want to limit them too much.