Problem
The Cheyenne system automatically kills processes that consume excessive resources when running on the login nodes.
Solution
- Use the system's compute nodes instead of the login nodes.
- Follow the guidelines below for appropriate use of login nodes.
Appropriate use of login nodes
Users may run short, non-memory-intensive processes interactively on the Cheyenne system's login nodes. These include tasks such as text editing or running small serial scripts or programs.
However, the login nodes may not be used to run processes that consume excessive resources. This is to ensure an appropriate balance between user convenience and login node performance.
This applies to individual processes that consume excessive amounts of CPU time, more than a few GB of memory, or excessive I/O resources. It also applies collectively to multiple concurrent tasks that an individual user runs.
Processes that use excessive resources on the login nodes are terminated automatically. Affected users are informed by email that their sessions were terminated. They are also advised to run such processes in batch or interactive jobs on the Casper cluster.
See Checking memory use for how to use the peak_memusage utility.