Re: [HTCondor-users] starting htcondor interactive jobs?

[Michael V Pelletier <Michael.V.Pelletier@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Aki Ketolainen <akik@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 07/29/2016 12:13 PM

> Question 1) A "condor_submit -interactive" job is started
ok but the 
> time delay that it takes
> to open a shell from the STARTD host varies from a few seconds up
to 20 
> seconds.
> There are no error messages output in the shell:

The thing to remember here is the negotiator interval
setting. Given the
overhead required for the processing, the central
manager only runs
the matching process between pending jobs and available
resources
at a minimum of 20-second intervals, with a default
of 60 seconds.

The short answer is that this is normal. You're not
merely launching
a remote login session to a specific machine which
would be immediate,
you're asking the system to match your session's requirements
to the
available resources and only then start the session,
and that matching
is what's taking the extra time.

The SchedLog entries are probably from the -auto-retry
command line
option used for condor_ssh_to_job while it waits for
the job to start.

> Question 2) Is there a way to start a X11 application
directly through a 
> "condor_submit -interactive" command?
> This would be very useful in our use case. For example "condor_submit
> -interactive editor"

Almost. I wrote up a little script that prompts the
user for
the memory and CPU estimate for a MATLAB session,
and then fires it up
on a suitable server. The trick was to replicate the
functionality of
the "-interactive" option manually within
the script:

1. Set up a dummy submit description with the requirements
and
   which sets +InteractiveJob = True.

   I think you could also use the stock
INTERACTIVE_SUBMIT_FILE
   which you'd obtain via condor_config_val
and then do a set of
   "-append" options for it with
condor_submit; I didn't think of
   that possibility when I wrote it three
years ago.

2. Submit it and grab the cluster ID.

3. Condor_ssh_to_job to the cluster ID with the desired
command:
        condor_ssh_to_job
12345.0 editor

This also helps avoid a situation where the TMOUT
set by the
interactive dummy submit causes the session to suddenly
die if
the user connects and then throws their X editor or
MATLAB session
into the background, leaving the shell racking up
idle time
until it finally times out and takes the X app with
it.

        -Michael Pelletier.
_