[torqueusers] reading the "Time Use" in qstat

[David Golden]

On Thursday 07 September 2006 11:16, bill wrote:
> Hello
>
> I' m not sure what means the "Time Use" column in qstat.
>
> Job id              Name             User             Time Use S Queue
> ------------------- ---------------- ---------------- -------- - -----
> 128.m1              possession       ghon             44:35:09 R batch
>
> 157.m1              ...ession_parall ghon             00:00:00 R batch
>
>
> The jobs are pretty much equals. Both jobs are running for two days now.
> Why there is one consuming Time Use, and another one not?
>

At some point I think torque qstat started reporting CPU time used
in that column, rather than job wall time used.  Maybe it always did, and
I'm (ahem) "misremembering" somehow. So maybe the latter job isn't
using much cpu time. (Some old versions of torque also had time reporting
bugs, but chances are you're not running one of 'em, especially since
one of the jobs has a real-looking figure...)

It's of course useful to know when users are arguably abusing cluster nodes 
they've reserved by mis-sizing their jobs leading to CPU underuse, but in the 
end we "bill" (currently only notionally in our academic case, but still) 'em 
for used wall time, not for actual used cpu time (they're typically blocking 
other people from using the node whether or not they're using the cpu 
properly...), so I'd rather the qstat default just showed elapsed wall time 
of job so far...

Might be time for me to read the qstat man page again... :-)