General/Slurm
Contents
Application Details
- Description: SLURM is an open-source job scheduler, used by HPCs.
- Version: 15.08.8
Introduction
The SLURM (Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management) workload manager is a free and open-source job scheduler for the Linux kernel. It is used by Viper and many of the world's supercomputers (and clusters).
- First, it allocates exclusive and/or non-exclusive access to resources (computer nodes) to users for some duration of time so they can perform work.
- Second, it provides a framework for starting, executing, and monitoring work (typically a parallel job such as MPI) on a set of allocated nodes.
- Thirdly, it arbitrates contention for resources by managing a queue of pending jobs.
Slurm takes your batch job submission and execute it across the computing nodes of Viper. How it is processed will depend on a number of factors including the queue it is submitted to, jobs already submitted to the queue etc.
Common Slurm Commands
Command | Description |
sbatch | Submits a batch script to SLURM. The batch script may be given to sbatch through a file name on the command line, or if no file name is specified, sbatch will read in a script from standard input. |
squeue | Used to view job and job step information for jobs managed by SLURM. |
scancel | Used to signal or cancel jobs, job arrays or job steps. |
sinfo | Used to view partition and node information for a system running SLURM. |
sbatch
Used to submit a job to Slurm.
[username@login01 ~]$ sbatch jobfile.job Submitted batch job 289535
The number displayed (289535) is the Job ID |
squeue
squeue shows information about jobs in the scheduling queue
[username@login01 ~]$ squeue JOBID PARTITION NAME USER ST TIME NODES NODELIST(REASON) 306414 compute clasDFT user R 16:36 1 c006 306413 compute mpi_benc user R 31:02 2 c[005,007] 306411 compute orca_1n user R 1:00:32 1 c004 306410 compute orca_1n user R 1:04:17 1 c003 306409 highmem cnv_obit user R 11:37:17 1 c232 306407 compute 20M4_20 user R 11:45:54 1 c012 306406 compute 20_ML_20 user R 11:55:40 1 c012
Description | |
JOBID | The unique identifier assinged to a job |
PARTITION | The type of node the job is running on e.g. compute, highmem, GPU |
NAME | Name of job |
USER | User ID of job owner |
ST | Job state code e.g. R stands for 'Running' |
TIME | Length of time a job has been running |
NODES | Amount of nodes a job is running on |
NODELIST(REASON) | List of nodes a job is running on, also provides reason a job is not running e.g. a dependency on a node. |
scancel
scancel is used to cancel currently running jobs. Only jobs running under your userid may be canceled.
[username@login01 ~]$ scancel 289535
No output is given by the command. |
sinfo
[username@login01 ~]$ sinfo PARTITION AVAIL TIMELIMIT NODES STATE NODELIST compute* up 2-00:00:00 9 mix c[006,012,014,016,018-020,022,170] compute* up 2-00:00:00 11 alloc c[003-004,008,015,046,086,093,098,138,167-168] compute* up 2-00:00:00 156 idle c[001-002,005,007,009-011,013,017,021,023-045,047-085,087-092,094-097,099-137,139-166,169,171-176] highmem up 4-00:00:00 1 mix c230 highmem up 4-00:00:00 2 alloc c[231-232] highmem up 4-00:00:00 1 idle c233 gpu up 5-00:00:00 4 idle gpu[01-04]
Common Submission Flags
For ease and repetition it is much easier to build Slurm commands into batch files, the following are an example of the most commonly used Slurm batch file commands.
Flag | Description |
-J / --job-name | Specify a name for the job |
-N / --nodes | Specifies the number of nodes to be allocated to a job |
-n / --ntasks | Specifies the allocation of resources e.g. for 1 Compute Node the maximum would be 28 |
-o / --output | Specifies the name of the output file |
-e / --error | Specifies the name of the error file |
-p / --partition | Specifies the specific partition for the job e.g. compute, highmem, gpu |
--exclusive | Requests exclusive access to nodes preventing other jobs from running |
Example Job Submission Script
#!/bin/bash #SBATCH -J Example_Slurm_Job #SBATCH -N 1 #SBATCH -n 28 #SBATCH -o %N.%j.%a.out #SBATCH -e %N.%j.%a.err #SBATCH -p compute #SBATCH --exclusive echo $SLURM_JOB_NODELIST module purge module add gcc/4.9.3 export I_MPI_DEBUG=5 export I_MPI_FABRICS=shm:tmi export I_MPI_FALLBACK=no /home/user/slurmexample
For more information on creating batch jobs visit the Batch Jobs guide
Further Information
- Slurm Website: https://slurm.schedmd.com/
- Slurm Rosetta (Useful for converting submission scripts from other formats)
- You might find applications' specific submission scripts here Application support