I worked on the same problem in my last job, where engineers had interactive sessions used for post simulation analysis and visualization. Only this was using PBSPro. As I recall, the engineers did not directly run the command to start an interactive session so we just started those interactive jobs in a queue with limits.
You could use a "wrapper script" maybe for your interactive sessions? That does not stop inventive users from figuring out what limits the wrapper script sets though. There are also idle timeouts for bash and C-shells which I used. On the compute nodes you can edit the /etc/profile scripts for bash and C, and put it a bit of logic. On a PBS job there are environment variables set, so you can say IF $PBS_INTERACTIVE THEN set timeout ________________________________ From: T Friddy [[email protected]] Sent: 29 August 2016 21:19 To: slurm-dev Subject: [slurm-dev] Combating idle interactive sessions Hi All, I'm having an issue with idle interactive sessions taking up resources for many hours. I was hoping I could restrict all interactive sessions to a single partition and then lower the time limit on that partition, but I haven't been able to find anything about partition specification pertaining to job type. Is it possible to do this? If not, is there another way to control such a scenario other than trusting users not to leave idle terminals open? Thanks Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. Employees of XMA Ltd are expressly required not to make defamatory statements and not to infringe or authorise any infringement of copyright or any other legal right by email communications. Any such communication is contrary to company policy and outside the scope of the employment of the individual concerned. The company will not accept any liability in respect of such communication, and the employee responsible will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising. XMA Limited is registered in England and Wales (registered no. 2051703). Registered Office: Wilford Industrial Estate, Ruddington Lane, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7EP
