Linux job management

It is simple to start jobs on Linux servers by typing commands at the command-line prompt. There is more to it when you want to manage those jobs so that you can run more than one at a time, share a multi-user machine politely, or disconnect from a login session while leaving the jobs running. Here's how.

  • backgrounding jobs: how to put a job in the background so you can do other things, bring it to the foreground again, terminate a job
  • priority: how to set the priority of a job to share a multi-user machine politely
  • shell limits: how to adjust limits on how much memory or CPU time a job may use
  • session control: how to manage login sessions without terminating jobs

Note that these apply primarily to the linux.math, biglinux.math, and fastlinux.math servers where we do not use a job scheduler. On the specialty machines (GPU servers, HPC clusters), you must use the Slurm job scheduler, and it takes care of these things for you.