Submitting interactive jobs to Gadi

Description

Sometimes you need to run code with specific hardware or memory requirements which are not available on you local computer or VDI. Gadi offers the option of requesting a node through its PBS in interactive mode, meaning that when the request gets allocated you get an interactive session of the granted machine. This can also be usefull for testing code on the supercomputer before the final submission so you can detect bugs and make sure everything works as expected.

$ qsub -I -P aa00 -q express -lwalltime=1:00:00,mem=4GB,ncpus=1,storage=gdata/xc0

This line has to be written on the Gadi login node. We specify qsub the same way as when submitting PBS jobs but in this case we add the option -I for interactive mode and the rest of the options for specifying the project, queue and the characteristics of the requested node. The syntax is the same used in PBS files, but here we specify everything in one terminal command line.

In interactive mode you’ll probably want to specify the express queue to minimise your waiting time. Be careful with the resources you request in this mode. Normally you’ll need just one cpu to test or run your code and remember to exit the session when you are done to avoid being charged.