If you wish to submit service jobs only through TORQUE, no special version of Moab is required. If you wish to submit service jobs using Moab's msub, then Moab 5.4 is required.
TORQUE service jobs are a special kind of job that is treated differently by TORQUE than normal batch jobs. TORQUE service jobs are not related to Moab's dynamic service jobs. A TORQUE service job cannot dynamically grow and shrink in size over time.
Jobs are marked as service jobs at the time they are submitted to Moab or TORQUE. Just like a normal job, a script file is specified with the job. In a batch job, the contents of the script file are taken by TORQUE and executed on the compute nodes. For a service job, however, the script file is assumed to respond to certain command-line arguments. Instead of just executing the script, TORQUE will use these command-line arguments to start, stop, and check on the status of the job. Listed below are the three command-line arguments that must be supported by any script submitted as part of a TORQUE service job:
This feature was created with long-running services in mind. The command-line arguments should be familiar to users who interact with Unix services, as each of the service scripts found in /etc/init.d/ also accept and respond to the arguments as explained above.
For example, if a user wants to start the Apache 2 server on a compute node, they can use a TORQUE service job and specify a script which will start, stop, and check on the status of the "httpd" daemon--possibly by using the already present /etc/init.d/httpd script.
If you wish to submit service jobs only through TORQUE, no special version of Moab is required. If you wish to submit service jobs using Moab's msub, then Moab 5.4 is required.
For details, see these topics:
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