Learning About Your Jobs Using condor_q

The condor_q command can be used for much more than just checking on whether your jobs are running or not! Read on to learn how you can use condor_q to answer many common questions about running jobs.

Summary

• condor_q: Show my jobs that have been submitted on this server.
  Useful options:
  • -nobatch: Starting in version HTCondor 8.6.0 installed in July 2016, data is displayed in a compact mode (one line per cluster). With this option output will be displayed in the old format (one line per process)
  • -all: Show all the jobs submitted on the submit server.
  • -hold: Show only jobs in the "on hold" state and the reason for that. Held jobs are those that got an error so they could not finish. An action from the user is expected to solve the problem.
  • -better-analyze JobId: -better-analyze : Analyse a specific job and show the reason why it is in its current state.
  • -run: Show your running jobs and related info, like how much time they have been running, in which machine, etc.
  • -dag: Organize condor_q output by DAG.
  • -long JobId: Show all information related to that job.
  • -af Attr1 Attr2 ...: List specific attributes of jobs, using autoformat.

Examples and Further Explanation

1. Default condor_q output

As of July 19, 2016, the default condor_q output will show a single user's jobs, grouped in "batches", as shown below:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q
OWNER   BATCH_NAME        SUBMITTED   DONE   RUN    IDLE   HOLD  TOTAL JOB_IDS
alice   CMD: sb          6/22 13:05      _     32      _      _      _ 14297940.23-99
alice   DAG: 14306351    6/22 13:47     27    113     65      _    205 14306411.0 ...
alice   CMD: job.sh      6/22 13:56      _      _     12      _      _ 14308195.6-58
alice   DAG: 14361197    6/22 16:04    995      1      _      _   1000 14367836.0

HTCondor will automatically group jobs into "batches" for this display. However, it's also possible for you to specify groups of jobs as a "batch" yourself. You can either:

• Add the following line to your submit file:

   batch_name = "CoolJobs" 
  

• Use the -batch-name option with condor_submit:

  [alice@submit]$ condor_submit submit_file.sub -batch-name CoolJobs
  

Either option will create a batch of jobs with the label "CoolJobs".

2. View all jobs.

To display more detailed condor_q output (where each job is listed on a separate line), you can use the batch name or any existing grouping constraint (ClusterId or other "-constraint" options - see below for more on constraints) and the -nobatch flag.

Looking at a batch of jobs with the same ClusterId would look like this:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -nobatch 195

 ID     OWNER    SUBMITTED     RUN_TIME ST PRI SIZE CMD
195.10  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 H  0    0.0 job.sh
195.14  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:01:44 R  0    0.0 job.sh
195.16  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:26 R  0    0.0 job.sh
195.39  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:05 R  0    0.0 job.sh
195.40  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 I  0    0.0 job.sh
195.41  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 I  0    0.0 job.sh
195.53  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 I  0    0.0 job.sh
195.57  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 I  0    0.0 job.sh
195.58  alice    6/22 13:00   0+00:00:00 I  0    0.0 job.sh

9 jobs; 0 completed, 0 removed, 5 idle, 3 running, 1 held, 0 suspended

This was the default view for condor_q from January 2016 until July 2016.

3. View jobs from all users.

By default, condor_q will just show you information about your jobs. To get information about all jobs in the queue, type:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -all

This will show a list of all job batches in the queue. To see a list of all jobs (individually, not in batches) for all users, combine the -all and -nobatch options with condor_q. This was the default view for condor_q before January 2016.

4. Determine why jobs are on hold.

If your jobs have gone on hold, you can see the hold reason by running:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -hold

or

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -hold JobId 

The first will show you the hold reasons for all of your jobs that are on hold; the second will show you the hold reason for a specific job. The hold reason is sometimes cut-off; try the following to see the entire hold reason:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -hold -af HoldReason

If you aren't sure what your hold reason means email chtc@cs.wisc.edu.

5. Find out why jobs are idle

condor_q has an option to describe why a job hasn't matched and started running. Find the JobId of a job that hasn't started running yet and use the following command:

$ condor_q -better-analyze JobId

After a minute or so, this command should print out some information about why your job isn't matching and starting. This information is not always easy to understand, so please email us with the output of this command if you have questions about what it means.

6. Find out where jobs are running.

To see which computers your jobs are running on, use:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -nobatch -run
428.0   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:17 slot1_12@e313.chtc.wisc.edu
428.1   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:11 slot1_8@e376.chtc.wisc.edu
428.2   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:16 slot1_15@e451.chtc.wisc.edu
428.3   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:16 slot1_17@e277.chtc.wisc.edu
428.5   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:16 slot1_9@e351.chtc.wisc.edu
428.7   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:16 slot1_1@e373.chtc.wisc.edu
428.8   alice        6/22  17:27   0+00:07:16 slot1_5@e264.chtc.wisc.edu

7. View jobs by DAG.

If you have submitted multiple DAGs to the queue, it can be hard to tell which jobs belong to which DAG. The -dag option to condor_q will sort your queue output by DAG:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -nobatch -dag
 ID      OWNER/NODENAME   SUBMITTED     RUN_TIME ST PRI SIZE CMD               
460.0   alice        11/18 16:51   0+00:00:17 R  0   0.3  condor_dagman -p 0
462.0    |-0           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh
463.0    |-1           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh
464.0    |-2           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh
461.0   alice        11/18 16:51   0+00:00:09 R  0   0.3  condor_dagman -p 0
465.0    |-0           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh
466.0    |-1           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh
467.0    |-2           11/18 16:51   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  print.sh

8 jobs; 0 completed, 0 removed, 6 idle, 2 running, 0 held, 0 suspended

8. View all details about a job.

Each job you submit has a series of attributes that are tracked by HTCondor. You can see the full set of attributes for a single job by using the "long" option for condor_q like so:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -l JobId 
...
Iwd = "/home/alice/analysis/39909"
JobPrio = 0
RequestCpus = 1
JobStatus = 1
ClusterId = 19997268
JobUniverse = 5
RequestDisk = 10485760
RequestMemory = 4096
DAGManJobId = 19448402
...

Attributes that are often useful for checking on jobs are:

• Iwd: the job's submission directory on the submit node
• UserLog: the log file for a job
• RequestMemory, RequestDisk: how much memory and disk you've requested per job
• MemoryUsage: how much memory the job has used so far
• JobStatus: numerical code indicating whether a job is idle, running, or held
• HoldReason: why a job is on hold
• DAGManJobId: for jobs managed by a DAG, this is the JobId of the parent DAG

9. View specific details about a job using auto-format

If you would like to see specific attributes (see above) for a job or group of jobs, you can use the "auto-format" (-af) option to condor_q which will print out only the attributes you name for a single job or group of jobs.

For example, if I would like to see the amount of memory and disk I've requested for all of my jobs, and how much memory is currently behing used, I can run:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -af RequestMemory RequestDisk MemoryUsage
1 325 undefined
1 325 undefined
2000 1000 245
2000 1000 220
2000 1000 245

10. Constraining the output of condor_q.

If you would like to find jobs that meet certain conditions, you can use condor_q's "constraint" option. For example, suppose you want to find all of the jobs associated with the DAGMan Job ID "234567". You can search using:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -constraint "DAGManJobId == 234567" 

To use a name (for example, a batch name) as a constraint, you'll need to use multiple sets of quotation marks:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -constraint 'JobBatchName == "MyJobs"'

One common use of constraints is to find all jobs that are running, held, or idle. To do this, use a constraint with the JobStatus attribute and the appropriate status number - the status codes can be found in Appendix A of the HTCondor Manual.

Remember condor_q -hold from before? In the background, the -hold option is constraining the list of jobs to jobs that are on hold (using the JobStatus attribute) and then printing out the HoldReason attribute. Try running:

[alice@submit]$ condor_q -constraint "JobStatus == 5" -af ClusterId ProcId HoldReason

You should see something very similar to running condor_q -hold!

11. Remove a held job from the queue

To remove a job held in the queue, run:

[alice@submit]$ condor_rm <JobID>

This will remove the job in the queue. Once you have made changes to allow the job to run successfully, the job can be resubmitted using condor_submit.

This page takes some of its content and formatting from this HTCondor reference page.