scontrol

scontrol is a scheduler command used to control queueing or running jobs.

Documentation

Documentation is available on the system using the command

$ man scontrol

Usage

The scontrol command provides users control of their jobs run through SLURM including actions like suspending a job, holding a job from running, or pulling status information on jobs.

To suspend a job that is currently running scontrol is used with the suspend argument:

$ scontrol suspend job-id

To resume a paused job, we use scontrol with the resume argument:

$ scontrol resume job-id

Slurm also provides a utility to hold jobs that are queued in the system. Holding a job will place the job in the lowest priority, effectively “holding” the job from being run. A job can only be held if it’s waiting on the system to be run. We use the hold argument to place a job into a held state:

$ scontrol hold job-id

We can then release a held job using the release argument:

$ scontrol release job-id

The scontrol command can also provide extensive information on jobs using the show job argument:

$ scontrol show job job-id

Further information on scontrol commands can be found by visiting the slurm page on scontrol.