Attention

Following the recent operating system upgrade, software listings and module load commands now reflect the upgraded system. Some examples and notices are still being updated and may contain outdated guidance.

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.