Specifying compute nodes

The environment variable TORQUE_HOME is where configuration files are stored. If you used the default locations during installation, you do not need to specify the TORQUE_HOME environment variable.

The pbs_server must recognize which systems on the network are its compute nodes. Specify each node on a line in the server's nodes file. This file is located at TORQUE_HOME/server_priv/nodes. In most cases, it is sufficient to specify just the names of the nodes on individual lines; however, various properties can be applied to each node.

Only a root user can access the server_priv directory.

Syntax of nodes file:

• The node-name must match the hostname on the node itself, including whether it is fully qualified or shortened.
• The [:ts] option marks the node as timeshared. Timeshared nodes are listed by the server in the node status report, but the server does not allocate jobs to them.
• The [np=] option specifies the number of virtual processors for a given node. The value can be less than, equal to, or greater than the number of physical processors on any given node.
• The [gpus=] option specifies the number of GPUs for a given node. The value can be less than, equal to, or greater than the number of physical GPUs on any given node.
• The node processor count can be automatically detected by the TORQUE server if auto_node_np is set to TRUE. This can be set using this command:

qmgr -c set server auto_node_np = True

Setting auto_node_np to TRUE overwrites the value of np set in TORQUE_HOME/server_priv/nodes.

• The [properties] option allows you to specify arbitrary strings to identify the node. Property strings are alphanumeric characters only and must begin with an alphabetic character.
• Comment lines are allowed in the nodes file if the first non-white space character is the pound sign (#).

The following example shows a possible node file listing.

TORQUE_HOME/server_priv/nodes:

Related topics 

• Initializing/Configuring TORQUE on the server (pbs_server)

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