[torqueusers] Question regarding getting the value of ppn

[Michael Homa]

I'm running torque 2.2.1 and Maui 3.2.6p20 on our university cluster.
For reasons having to do with the software package Gaussian, I'd like to
get the NUMERICAL setting for ppn and place it in a Gaussian input file.
There appears to be no environmental variable setting containing this. I
looked at both the man page as well as the wiki. However, using a stub
program, I was able to determine that the content of the the PBS_NODEFILE
variable is correlated to ppn. For example

    o If qsub -l node=2 stub          then PBS_NODEFILE contains
                                         node1
                                         node2

    o If qsub -l node=1:ppn=2 stub    then PBS_NODEFILE contains
                                         node1
                                         node1

    o If qsub -l node=2:ppn=2 stub    then PBS_NODEFILE contains
                                         node1
                                         node1
                                         node2
                                         node2

    o If qsub -l node=2:ppn=3 stub    then PBS_NODEFILE contains
                                         node1
                                         node1
                                         node1
                                         node2
                                         node2
                                         node2

So, obviously, I can cat the PBS_NODEFILE into a shell array and, via a
regular expression or via some other method, calculate what ppn is based
on the number of duplicate names. But, I'm hoping there is a cleaner way
to do this? Or, maybe an undocumented environmental variable? I didn't see
anything but hope springs eternal.

Michael Homa
Operating Systems Support and Database Group
Academic Computing and Communication Center
University of Illinois at Chicago
email:  mhoma at uic.edu