Job Queuing and Cluster Utilization¶

How long do I have to wait for my job to start?¶

There is no guaranteed way to know the exact wait time for a SLURM job, but you can get a good estimate using SLURM commands and by checking cluster utilisation.

Check your job in the queue¶

Use the following command to see your jobs and their status:

Terminal

squeue -u $USER

Look for the ST (state) and START_TIME columns. PD means "pending," and R means "running."

Estimated start time¶

After submitting a job, you can check its estimated start time (if available):

Terminal

scontrol show job <jobid> | grep StartTime

This shows SLURM's estimated start time, but be aware that this can change as other jobs are submitted or finish.

Tips for faster job start¶

If you need your jobs to start quickly, consider:

Requesting fewer resources (such as fewer CPUs, less memory, or a shorter time limit)
Being flexible with which partition you use

This command can be useful to list configured and allocated resources for all nodes:

Terminal

for i in {01..09} {11..12} {14..43}; do echo aoraki$i; scontrol show node aoraki$i | grep TRES; done

How do I check cluster/node usage and availability?¶

Use:

Terminal

sinfo

This displays the status of partitions and nodes.