On 10/21/2011 11:44 AM, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote: > On 10/21/11 09:10, Prentice Bisbal wrote: >> Beowulfers, >> >> I have a question that isn't directly related to clusters, but I suspect >> it's an issue many of you are dealing with are dealt with: users using >> the screen command to stay logged in on systems and running long jobs >> that they forget about. Have any of you experienced this, and how did >> you deal with it? > > I think this is strongly tied to what kind of work the users are doing > (i.e. how interactive it is, how long jobs take, how likely failure is > to occur that they must react to). In my personal experience the jobs I > spawn aren't interactive, tend to take a long time, and because of point > 2 require me to react pretty quickly to their failure or I lose out on > valuable compute-time. However, they are cumbersome to execute via a > queuing manager (my work is in systems, so perhaps that area is an > exception). Therefore what I always do is just nohup myself a job, and > tail -f it if I need to watch it. I've adapted my ssh config such that > I don't get booted off after 5 or 10 minutes without any input from me > (I think the limit I set is like 2hours or something), so I can watch > output fly by to my hearts content. > > If I were you, I think the best way to avoid a user-uprising, but to > achieve your goal is to give instructions on how a user can nohup (yes, > just assume they don't know how) and how to configure ssh to not die > after a short time. This way they don't have to worry about getting > disconnected if they aren't constantly interacting (so they can watch > output), but they also aren't staying logged on indefinitely (since > presumably their laptops/desktops aren't on indefinitely). > > If you give them an alternative that is well defined with an example > (not just, "Oh you can use such-and-such instead.") I can hardly believe > they'll be all that upset. >
Ellis, Using nohup was exactly the advice I gave to one of my users yesterday. Not sure if he'll use it. 'man' is a very difficult program to learn, from what I understand. Prentice _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
