SLURM

Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM)

SLURM is an open-source workload manager designed for Linux clusters of all sizes. It provides three key functions. First, it allocates exclusive 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) on a set of allocated nodes. Finally, it arbitrates contention for resources by managing a queue of pending work.

Documentation

Submitting Jobs

Checking Job Status

Checking Cluster Status

Official Documentation

FAQ

Commands

Below are some of the common commands used in Slurm. Further information on how to use these commands is found in the documentation linked above. To see all flags available for a command, please check the command's manual by using man $COMMAND on the command line.

srun

srun runs a parallel job on a cluster managed by Slurm. If necessary, it will first create a resource allocation in which to run the parallel job.

salloc

salloc allocates a Slurm job allocation, which is a set of resources (nodes), possibly with some set of constraints (e.g. number of processors per node). When salloc successfully obtains the requested allocation, it then runs the command specified by the user. Finally, when the user specified command is complete, salloc relinquishes the job allocation. If no command is specified, salloc runs the user's default shell.

sbatch

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. The batch script may contain options preceded with "#SBATCH" before any executable commands in the script.

squeue

squeue views job and job step information for jobs managed by Slurm.

scancel

scancel signals or cancels jobs, job arrays, or job steps. An arbitrary number of jobs or job steps may be signaled using job specification filters or a space separated list of specific job and/or job step IDs.

sacct

sacct displays job accounting data stored in the job accounting log file or Slurm database in a variety of forms for your analysis. The sacct command displays information on jobs, job steps, status, and exitcodes by default. You can tailor the output with the use of the --format= option to specify the fields to be shown.

sstat

sstat displays job status information for your analysis. The sstat command displays information pertaining to CPU, Task, Node, Resident Set Size (RSS) and Virtual Memory (VM). You can tailor the output with the use of the --fields= option to specify the fields to be shown.

Modules

If you are trying to use GNU Modules in a Slurm job, please read the section of our Modules documentation on non-interactive shell sessions.

Quick Guide to translate PBS/Torque to SLURM

User commands

	PBS/Torque	SLURM
Job submission	qsub [filename]	sbatch [filename]
Job deletion	qdel [job_id]	scancel [job_id]
Job status (by job)	qstat [job_id]	squeue --job [job_id]
Full job status (by job)	qstat -f [job_id]	scontrol show job [job_id]
Job status (by user)	qstat -u [username]	squeue --user=[username]

Environment variables

	PBS/Torque	SLURM
Job ID	$PBS_JOBID	$SLURM_JOBID
Submit Directory	$PBS_O_WORKDIR	$SLURM_SUBMIT_DIR
Node List	$PBS_NODEFILE	$SLURM_JOB_NODELIST

Job specification

	PBS/Torque	SLURM
Script directive	#PBS	#SBATCH
Job Name	-N [name]	--job-name=[name] OR -J [name]
Node Count	-l nodes=[count]	--nodes=[min[-max]] OR -N [min[-max]]
CPU Count	-l ppn=[count]	--ntasks-per-node=[count]
CPUs Per Task		--cpus-per-task=[count]
Memory Size	-l mem=[MB]	--mem=[MB] OR --mem-per-cpu=[MB]
Wall Clock Limit	-l walltime=[hh:mm:ss]	--time=[min] OR --time=[days-hh:mm:ss]
Node Properties	-l nodes=4:ppn=8:[property]	--constraint=[list]
Standard Output File	-o [file_name]	--output=[file_name] OR -o [file_name]
Standard Error File	-e [file_name]	--error=[file_name] OR -e [file_name]
Combine stdout/stderr	-j oe (both to stdout)	(Default if you don't specify --error)
Job Arrays	-t [array_spec]	--array=[array_spec] OR -a [array_spec]
Delay Job Start	-a [time]	--begin=[time]