	Department of Engineering

University of Cambridge > Engineering Department > Computing Help > Grid Engine > Unix

Controlling Grid Engine batch jobs from the command line

to run your job, the minimum you need to do is
```
     qsub scriptname 
```

If you have more complex requirements, you can specify your resource requirements on the command line. e.g.
```
     qsub -l h_vmem=2G scriptname 
```
which will ask for 2G of virtual memory.

by default, gridengine will attempt to run your job in your home directory.

by default stdout is written to the file scriptfile.ojobID and stderr is written to the file scriptfile.ejobid (where scriptfile is the name of the job script, and jobID is the GridEngine job number. So if job number 14236 ran the script "testit", the files produced would be testit.o14236 and testit.e14236

to specify where stdout and stderr should be sent:
```
     qsub -o outputfile -e errorfile scriptname 
```
to write to outputfile and errorfile in the current working directory. Alternatively,
```
     qsub -cwd -o logfiles/  jobscript 
```
would write output to logfiles/jobscript.o<jobid> and errors to logfiles/jobsscript.e<jobid>

to see what state the machines are in, do
```
     qhost 
```

to see what state the jobs are in, do
```
     qstat -f 
```

to look at running jobs only, do
```
     qstat -s r 
```

to look at pending jobs only, do
```
     qstat -s p 
```

to see what state all jobs with a particular resource requested are in, do
```
     qstat -l lr=1 -f 
```

to see all of your own jobs, do
```
     qstat -u userid 
```

to look at resource usage of all your finished jobs, do
```
     qacct -o userid 
```

to look at resource usage and exit status of a particular job, do
```
     qacct -j jobid 
```

To make a job wait until a set of other jobs have completed:
```
     qsub -hold_jid 45,46,47,48,49,50 scriptname 
```
would ensure that scriptname wasn't run until after all the jobs numbered 45 to 50 had completed.

to get emailed when job status changes:
```
     qsub -m be scriptname 
```
would email you when the job 'b'egan or 'e'nded, while
```
     qsub -m as scriptname 
```
would email you when the job was 'a'borted or 's'uspended.

if you want to be able to look at accounting information (only that which is available after jobs have completed) for a group of jobs at once, rather than a single job specified by a number or "all the jobs I've ever submitted", then you should submit all the relevant jobs as
```
     qsub -A 'my accounting string' scriptname 
```
You can then look at the accounting for all jobs that were submitted with that specified account string, by doing
```
     qacct -A 'my accounting string' 
```

if you need to delete a job that's running, use the qdel command:
```
     qdel jobid 
```

© Cambridge University Engineering Dept
Tim Love (tpl)
(from information provided by js138)
Last updated: August 2010