Interactive Jobs

Interactive jobs may be submitted to Roar using the -I (for interactive) flag. Interactive jobs require resource requests and an allocation. An interactive job can be submitted using a command similar to:

qsub -A open -l walltime=1:00:00 -l nodes=1:ppn=2 -I

The job will be given a job ID and your session will wait until this job has the resources to start. You will then be placed on the compute node and given a usable terminal session within your current session. For example a user submitting an interactive job may see

[abc123@aci-lgn-001 ~]$ qsub -I -l nodes=1:ppn=1 -l walltime=4:00:00 -A open
qsub: waiting for job 2449840.torque01.util.production.int.aci.ics.psu.edu u to start
qsub: job 2449840.torque01.util.production.int.aci.ics.psu.edu ready
[abc123@comp-bc-0267 ~]$

Note that the node the user is on changes from log-in node (aci-lgn-001) to a basic core compute node (comp-bc-0267) when the job starts. You can ask for x-windows to be displayed using the -X flag with the qsub command, as long as you have logged into ACI-b using the -Y flag with ssh. Note that some users experiencing difficulty with interactive x-windows on ACI-b jobs will often use an Open OnDemand interactive session to connect to ACI-i, and then ssh with the -Y flag to ACI-b from ACI-i.

It is recommended that you compile your code using an interactive job on the nodes that your job will run.