Batch System

The PPE group has limited resources for batch computing. The ppepbs batch system is provided for running a small number of jobs. If a large number of jobs are needed then please use the Grid or try the Compute Cluster

PPEPBS

The PPE group has a small batch system that is managed via the TORQUE Resource Manager (based on OpenPBS) and the Maui scheduler. Each of the nodes within this batch system has 64 bit SL 4.4 installed. Currently the LINUX desktops are a mixture of SL4x and SL5x. To run on the batch system executables should therefore be built on an 64 bit SL4x PPE LINUX desktop or ppelx64sl4 (see LoginServices). To check the version scientific linux installed:

cat /etc/redhat-release

and to check if the a machine is 32 or 64 bit:

uname -m

a 64 bit machine will return x86_64 and 32 bit machine i686.

Job submission

ssh ppepbs
qsub test.job

where test.job might contain

#PBS -N TestJob
#PBS -l walltime=1,mem=1024Mb
#PBS -m abe
#PBS -M user@machine
#
echo "This is a test..."

More documentation is given in the qsub man page. The TORQUE documentation pages installed on ppepbs can be listed via

ssh ppepbs
rpm -ql torque-docs

Queues

Queue            Memory CPU Time Walltime Node  Run Que Lm  State
---------------- ------ -------- -------- ----  --- --- --  -----
short              --      --    01:00:00   --    0   0 --   E R
medium             --      --    06:00:00   --    0   0 --   E R
long               --      --    24:00:00   --    0   0 --   E R
vlong              --      --    120:00:0   --    0   0 --   E R

where short is the default queue and Walltime is the maximum walltime allowed on each queue. While it is possible to view your own jobs with qstat, the command will not display all jobs. To display all jobs use the Maui client command showq

-- AndrewPickford - 12 Jan 2009