Batch Jobs

This page aims to allow the user to submit a job using the Slurm resource manager and scheduler which is responsible for allocating resources. Resource intensive applications should always be run via Slurm.

It is assumed that you are already familiar with Slurm. If not, you can read the Slurm quickstart which cover the basics. You can also refer to the Slurm documentation or manual pages and in particular the page about sbatch.

Specifying the account

The account option (--account=project_<id>) is mandatory. Failing to set it will cause the following error:

Unable to allocate resources: Job violates accounting/QOS policy 
(job submit limit, user's size and/or time limits)

If you don't want to specify the account to use every time you submit a job, you can add the following lines to your .bashrc file.

export SBATCH_ACCOUNT=project_<id>
export SALLOC_ACCOUNT=project_<id>

Where you have to replace project_<id> with the project name that has been assigned to you.

Example Batch Scripts

Shared memory jobs

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --job-name=examplejob   # Job name
#SBATCH --output=examplejob.o%j # Name of stdout output file
#SBATCH --error=examplejob.e%j  # Name of stderr error file
#SBATCH --partition=small       # Partition (queue) name
#SBATCH --ntasks=1              # One task (process)
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=128     # Number of cores (threads)
#SBATCH --time=12:00:00         # Run time (hh:mm:ss)
#SBATCH --mail-type=all         # Send email at begin and end of job
#SBATCH --account=project_<id>  # Project for billing
#SBATCH --mail-user=username@domain.com

# Any other commands must follow the #SBATCH directives

# Set the number of threads based on --cpus-per-task
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=$SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK

./your_application

MPI-based jobs

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --job-name=examplejob   # Job name
#SBATCH --output=examplejob.o%j # Name of stdout output file
#SBATCH --error=examplejob.e%j  # Name of stderr error file
#SBATCH --partition=standard    # Partition (queue) name
#SBATCH --nodes=50              # Total number of nodes 
#SBATCH --ntasks=6400           # Total number of mpi tasks
#SBATCH --time= 1-12:00:00      # Run time (d-hh:mm:ss)
#SBATCH --mail-type=all         # Send email at begin and end of job
#SBATCH --account=project_<id>  # Project for billing
#SBATCH --mail-user=username@domain.com

# Any other commands must follow the #SBATCH directives

# Launch MPI code 
srun ./your_application # Use srun instead of mpirun or mpiexec

Hybrid MPI+OpenMP jobs

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --job-name=examplejob   # Job name
#SBATCH --output=examplejob.o%j # Name of stdout output file
#SBATCH --error=examplejob.e%j  # Name of stderr error file
#SBATCH --partition=standard    # Partition (queue) name
#SBATCH --nodes=50              # Total number of nodes 
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=16    # Number of mpi tasks per node
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=8       # Number of cores (threads) per task
#SBATCH --time=1-12:00:00       # Run time (d-hh:mm:ss)
#SBATCH --mail-type=all         # Send email at begin and end of job
#SBATCH --account=project_<id>  # Project for billing
#SBATCH --mail-user=username@domain.com

# Any other commands must follow the #SBATCH directives

# Set the number of threads based on --cpus-per-task
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=$SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK

# Launch MPI code 
srun ./your_application # Use srun instead of mpirun or mpiexec

Serial Job

#!/bin/bash -l
#SBATCH --job-name=examplejob   # Job name
#SBATCH --output=examplejob.o%j # Name of stdout output file
#SBATCH --error=examplejob.e%j  # Name of stderr error file
#SBATCH --partition=debug       # Partition (queue) name
#SBATCH --ntasks=1              # One task (process)
#SBATCH --time=00:15:00         # Run time (hh:mm:ss)
#SBATCH --mail-type=all         # Send email at begin and end of job
#SBATCH --account=project_id    # Project ID
#SBATCH --mail-user=username@domain.com

./your_application

Automatic requeuing

The LUMI Slurm configuration has automatic requeuing of jobs upon node failure enabled. It means that if a node fails, your job will be automatically resubmitted to the queue and will have the same job ID and possibly truncate the previous output. Here are some important parameters you can use to alter the default behavior.

you can disable automatic requeuing using the --no-requeue option
you can avoid your output file being truncated in case of requeuing by using the --open-mode=append option

You can apply these two options permanently by exporting the following environment variables in your .bashrc:

SBATCH_NO_REQUEUE=1 to disable requeuing
SBATCH_OPEN_MODE=append to avoid output truncating after requeuing

If you want to perform specific operations in your batch script when a job has been requeued you can check the value of the SLURM_RESTART_COUNT variable. The value of this variable will be 0 if it's the first time the job is run. If the job has been restarted then the value will be the number of times the job has been restarted.

Common error messages

Below are common error messages you may get when the job submission fails.

Invalid account or account/partition combination specified

The complete error message is as shown below:

sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Invalid account or account/partition combination specified

This error message refers to Slurm options --account=<project> and --partition. The most common causes are:

project does not exist.
project exists, but you are not a member of it
partition does not exist

Job violates accounting/QOS policy

The complete error message is as shown below:

sbatch: error: AssocMaxSubmitJobLimit
sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Job violates accounting/QOS policy (job submit limit, user's size and/or time limits)

The most common causes are:

your allocation has no compute time left
job script is missing the --account parameter.
your project has too many jobs in the system, either running or queuing. Slurm counts each job within an array job as a separate job.

Common Slurm options

Basic job specification

Option	Description
`--time`	Set a limit on the total run time of the job allocation
`--account`	Charge resources used by this job to specified project
`--partition`	Request a specific partition for the resource allocation
`--job-name`	Specify a name for the job allocation

Specify tasks distribution

Option	Description
`--nodes`	Number of nodes to be allocated to the job
`--ntasks`	Set the maximum number of tasks (MPI ranks)
`--ntasks-per-node`	Set the number of tasks per node
`--ntasks-per-socket`	Set the number of tasks on each node
`--ntasks-per-core`	Set the maximum number of task on each core

Request CPU cores

Option	Description
`--cpus-per-task`	Set the number of cores per tasks
`--cpus-per-gpu`	Set the number of CPUs per allocated GPU

Request GPUs

Option	Description
`--gpus`	Set the total number of GPUs to be allocated for the job
`--gpus-per-node`	Set the number of GPUs per node
`--gpus-per-task`	Set the number of GPUs per task

Request memory

Option	Description
`--mem`	Set the memory per node
`--mem-per-cpu`	Set the memory per allocated CPU cores
`--mem-per-gpu`	Set the memory per allocated GPU

Receive email notifications

Email notifications from Slurm can be requested when certain events occur (job starts, fails, ...).

Email Type	Send email when
`--mail-user`	Used to specify the email that should receive notification
`--mail-type`	When to send an email: `BEGIN`, `END`, `FAIL`, `ALL`

Pipelining with dependencies

Job dependencies allow you to defer the start of a job until the specified dependencies have been satisfied. Dependencies can be defined in a batch script with the --dependency directive or be passed as a command-line argument to sbatch.

sbatch --dependency=<type:job_id[:job_id]>

The type defines the condition that the job with ID job_id must fulfil so that, the job on which it depends can start. For example

$ sbatch job1.sh
Submitted batch job 123456

$ sbatch --dependency=afterany:123456 job2.sh
Submitted batch job 123458

Will only start execution of job2.sh if, job1.sh has finished. The available types and their description are presented in the table below.

Dependency type	Description
`after:jobid[:jobid...]`	Begin after the specified jobs have started
`afterany:jobid[:jobid...]`	Begin after the specified jobs have finished
`afternotok:jobid[:jobid...]`	Begin after the specified jobs have failed
`afterok:jobid[:jobid...]`	Begin after the specified jobs have run to completion

Example

The example below demonstrate the submission of jobs with dependencies with a bash script. It also shows you an example of a helper function that extracts the job ID from the output of the sbatch command.

#!/bin/bash

submit_job() {
  sub="$(sbatch "$@")"

  if [[ "$sub" =~ Submitted\ batch\ job\ ([0-9]+) ]]; then
    echo "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
  else
    exit 1
  fi
}

# first job - no dependencies
id1=$(submit_job job1.sh)

# Two jobs that depend on the first job
id2=$(submit_job --dependency=afterany:$id1 job2.sh)
id3=$(submit_job --dependency=afterany:$id1 job3.sh)

# One job that depends on both the second and the third jobs
id4=$(submit_job  --dependency=afterany:$id2:$id3 job4.sh)

Warning

The example above is not a Slurm batch script. It should be used where the sbatchis available. Typically from a login node as the command is not available on the compute node.