On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 15:10, Prentice Bisbal <prent...@ias.edu> wrote: > Periodically, when I have to shutdown/reboot a system for maintenance, > I find a LOT of shells being run through the screen command for users > who aren't logged in. The majority are idle shells, but many are running > jobs, that seem to be forgotten about. > ... > I would like to remove screen from my environment entirely to prevent > this.
>From what I understand from your message, it's not screen per-se which upsets you, it's the way it is (ab)used by some users to start long running memory hogging jobs; you seem to be OK with idle shells found at maintenance time which are still started through screen. So why the backlash against screen ? Starting jobs in the background can be done directly through the shell, with no screen; if the job can be split in smaller pieces time-wise, they can be started by at/cron; screen can be installed by a user, possible under a different name... so many and surely other possibilities to still upset you even if you uninstall screen, because you focus on the wrong subject. To deal with forgotten long running jobs, you have various administrative (f.e. bill users/groups, even if in some kind of symbolic way) or technical (f.e. only allow 24h CPU time through system-wide limits or install a daemon which watches and warns and/or takes measures) means - some of these have been discussed on this very list in the past or have been mentioned earlier in this thread. Each situation is different (f.e. some legitimate jobs could run for more than 24h), so you should check all suggestions and apply the one(s) which fit(s) best. I know from my own experience that it's not easy to be on this side of the fence :-) Good luck! Bogdan _______________________________________________ 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
