[Condor-users] multi-user question

[Aurelien GROSDIDIER <aurelien.grosdidier@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

We're several users using condor 6.6.5 to dispatch jobs to about 50 machines. 
Most of these jobs are "background jobs" (ie. 300 jobs of 5-10h each, low 
priority), submitted by a single user (the user A). Other users (let's call 
them B), want to be able to run "interactive jobs" (ie. 300 jobs of 10min 
each, high priority).

We currently have a problem related to the mix between background and 
interactive jobs not supporting checkpointing, and coming from several users 
(with a single user, condor_prio would have been a nice solution).

When users B submit jobs. As A's priority is lower than B, A's jobs are 
evicted. From the condor manual, i read that this can solved with the 
PREEMPTION_REQUIREMENTS. Ok.

Also, as far as i understand, user priorities are linked to ressource 
repartition, and are not able to change job ranks in the queue. Thus, I also 
suspect that B's jobs won't be executed until the all the jobs previously 
submitted by A are completed. 

In other words, is there any way to make sure that submitted jobs are added on 
top of the queue (so that they are executed as soon as a machine is free), 
instead of adding them at the bottom ?

Any suggestions are welcome :)

Aurelien