Hi Brian, >From your response, I speculate that my wording sounded harsh or unrespectful. That was not my intention and therefore I sincerely apologize for it.
In fact my perplexity is certainly due to my ignorance (as it must be very clear by the number and "quality" of queries that I am posting on this mailing list). It seemed to me that what is currently available is a special edge case, whereas the simpler one is not covered, so I was (perhaps still am) convinced that I must have misunderstood how things work. Perhaps my "am I missing something?" sounded rhetorical rather than sincere which was the spirit I wrote it with. Sorry about that. I find it a nice coincidence that you suggested paying SchedMD for this, because after the clarifications which I am trying to get in this thread, I thought to ask my management to do exactly that!!! For the local license, are you suggesting to programmatically change slurm.conf and reconfigure e.g. in a cron? Thanks a lot for your help and have a great weekend Davide On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 11:52 AM Brian Andrus <toomuc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Davide, > > I'll not engage on this. If you want a feature, pay SchedMD for support > and they will prioritize it and work on it. You are already using a > very impressive bit of software for free. > > As far as local license updates, yes, you can do the local license and > reconfigure regularly. Feel free to do that. It is not something that > scales well, but it looks like you have a rather beginner cluster that > would never be impacted by such choices. > > Brian Andrus > > > On 9/16/2022 10:00 AM, Davide DelVento wrote: > > Thanks Brian. > > > > I am still perplexed. What is a database to install, administer, > > patch, update, could break, be down, etc buying us? I see limited use > > cases, e.g. a license server which does not provide the license > > count/use in a parsable way, and that someone wants to use with > > multiple SLURM installations (if it's on a single one, the local > > license is perfect). Wouldn't it much, much easier for everybody if > > one could specify a script (the bullet 1. you mentioned) inside SLURM, > > and use the license server ITSELF as the authoritative source of > > license count? Sure, it won't be perfect, e.g. race conditions in > > license acquisition can still cause failures, but the database won't > > be fixing that.... > > I must be missing something.... > > > > Alternatively, can one update the license count of local license with > > a scontrol command, rather than changing the slurm.conf and > > reconfigure? That could make what I say possible.... > > > > Thanks > > > > On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 9:25 AM Brian Andrus <toomuc...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Davide, > >> > >> You have it pretty correct. While the database itself is not part of the > >> slurm suite, slurmdbd (which would access the database) is. > >> > >> As far as writing something that keeps things updated, I'm sure many > >> have done this. However, it would be unique to your installation. The > >> specific number of licenses, naming them, what license server is being > >> used, etc. > >> All of that could easily be a few lines in a script that you have in a > >> cron job or other trigger (eg prolog/epilog). You would just: > >> > >> 1) Read/parse current licenses/use (eg: if you are using flexlm, lmutil > >> lmstat output) > >> 2) Update the database (sacctmgr command) > >> > >> As you can see, that 1st step would be highly dependent on you and your > >> environment. The 2nd step would be dependent on what things you are > >> tracking within that. > >> > >> Brian Andrus > >> > >> > >> On 9/16/2022 5:01 AM, Davide DelVento wrote: > >>> So if I understand correctly, this "remote database" is something that > >>> is neither part of slurm itself, nor part of the license server per > >>> se, correct? > >>> > >>> Regarding the "if you got creative", has anybody on this list done > >>> that already? I can't believe I'm the first one wanting this feature! > >>> Matching the number in that database with the actual number the > >>> license server knows would be extremely helpful! We use various > >>> license servers (for various licensed software), so each one of them > >>> would be useful. I can probably script/develop one of these myself, > >>> but I am not sure I've got the time... > >>> > >>> Thanks! > >>> > >>> On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 6:04 PM Brian Andrus <toomuc...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>> So if you follow the links to: https://slurm.schedmd.com/licenses.html > >>>> you should see the difference. > >>>> > >>>> Local licenses are just a counter that is setup in slurm.conf > >>>> Remote liceneses are a counter in a database (the database is "remote"), > >>>> so you can change/update it dynamically. So, you could change their > >>>> allocation with a sacctmgr command. It is especially useful when you are > >>>> managing multiple clusters that share licenses. You can allocate that a > >>>> certain number are allowed by each cluster and change that if needed. > >>>> > >>>> If you got creative, you could keep the license count that is in the > >>>> database updated to match the number free from flexlm to stop license > >>>> starvation due to users outside slurm using them up so they really > >>>> aren't available to slurm. > >>>> > >>>> Brian Andrus > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> On 9/15/2022 3:34 PM, Davide DelVento wrote: > >>>>> I am a bit confused by remote licenses. > >>>>> > >>>>> https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-users/2020-September/006049.html > >>>>> (which is only 2 years old) claims that they are just a counter, so > >>>>> like local licenses. Then why call them remote? > >>>>> > >>>>> Only a few days after, this > >>>>> https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-users/2020-September/006081.html > >>>>> appeared to imply (but not clearly stated) that the remote license are > >>>>> not simply a counter, but then it's not clear how they are different. > >>>>> > >>>>> The current documentation (and attempts to run the "add resource" > >>>>> command) says that one must use the license count, which seems to > >>>>> imply they are just a simple counter (but then what do they need the > >>>>> server for)? > >>>>> > >>>>> So what is what? > >>>>> > >>>>> In my cursory past experience with this, it seemed that it were > >>>>> possible to query a license server (at least some of them) to get the > >>>>> actual number of available licenses and schedule (or let jobs pending) > >>>>> accordingly. Which would be very helpful for the not-too-uncommon > >>>>> situation in which the same license server provides licenses for both > >>>>> the HPC cluster and other non-slurm-controlled resources, such a > >>>>> user's workstations. Was that impression wrong, or perhaps somebody > >>>>> scripted it in some way? If the latter, does anybody know if those > >>>>> scripts are publicly available anywhere? > >>>>> > >>>>> Thanks > >>>>> >
