Interactive Jobs With Slurm

Interactive jobs are jobs that allow shell access to computing nodes where applications can be run interactively, heavy processing of files, or compiling large applications. They can be requested with similar arguments to batch jobs. ARCC has configured the clusters such that Slurm interactive allocations will give shell access on the compute nodes themselves rather than keeping the shell on the login node. The salloc command is appropriate to launch interactive jobs.

Example

$ salloc --account=projectname --nodes=1 --ntasks-per-node=1 --cpus-per-task=8 

The value of interactive jobs is to allow users to work interactively with the CLI or interactive use of debuggers (ddt, gdb) , profilers (map, gprof), or language interpreters such as Python, R, or Julia.

Interactive Job Time Limits

Please keep in mind that interactive jobs are not intended to last multiple days. On Some ARCC HPC Clusters there is a max amount of time researchers can request interactive jobs. Typically a working day or a little more.

Sessions and Modules

When starting an interactive job with 'salloc' it starts a new terminal session on the compute node allocated. This allows researchers to run commands 'live' and see the output within that session.

Software Modules

If any modules are required to complete the workflow, it is a good idea to load them within this new session. This is because there is no gaurentee that previously loaded modules on login nodes will carry over to this new session.

Learn More

Learn more with ARCC's tutorials on creating interactive jobs using the Slurm system