On Tuesday, 5 May 2020 11:00:27 PM PDT Maria Semple wrote: > Is there no way to achieve what I want then? I'd like the first and last job > steps to always be able to run, even if the second step needs too many > resources (based on the cluster).
That should just work. #!/bin/bash #SBATCH -c 2 #SBATCH -n 1 srun -c 1 echo hello srun -c 4 echo big wide srun -c 1 echo world gives: hello srun: Job step's --cpus-per-task value exceeds that of job (4 > 2). Job step may never run. srun: error: Unable to create step for job 604659: More processors requested than permitted world > As a side note, do you know why it's not even possible to restrict the > number of resources a single step uses (i.e. set less CPUs than are > available to the full job)? My suspicion is that you've not set up Slurm to use cgroups to restrict the resources a job can use to just those requested. https://slurm.schedmd.com/cgroups.html All the best, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Berkeley, CA, USA