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Exercise 1: Basic SLURM Commands

Once you have a BAND desktop, start a terminal.

queue

Check available nodes

sinfo

This shows cluster partitions, number of nodes, and their state.

queue

Common states

idle  : ready for work
alloc : node is fully allocated. no free resources.
mix   : some resources are available, some are in use.
down  : unavailable
drain : unavailable

Check running job

squeue

Useful flags:

squeue -u $USER # only show your job
  • $USER is a shell variable, which automatically expands to your login username
  • You can also manually specifying a username string instead of relying on the variable, e.g.
squeue -u abcd_gmail

👉 You should see 1 job under your name, which is your running BAND desktop. Note the JobID.

queue

  • To find out your user name:
whoami

  • On the BAND platform, username is derived from your email in this way:

    • Take everything before the @
    • Take the first token after @ and before .
    • Concatenate them with an uderscore _

For example:

  • Email: abcd@example.com
  • Username: abcd_example

Show detailed job information

scontrol show job <JobID>

queue

Cancel a job

scancel <JoBID>

Task: Try canceling your own desktop job.

If successful: - You’ll lose connection to your desktop (red connection error).

  • Close the browser tab, return to the launch page → no desktop running.

  • Launch another desktop and open a terminal again to continue.

queue

Note: If you cancel another person’s job, you should get a permission denied error.

queue