HAAG HPC Training

Submitting Your First Job

This guide shows how to submit a small CPU job on PACE ICE, check its status, and read its output.

1. Create a working folder

In your ICE terminal, run:

mkdir -p ~/first-job-demo
cd ~/first-job-demo

2. Create the job script

Open a new file:

nano first-job.slurm

Paste this script into Nano:

#!/bin/bash

#SBATCH --job-name=first-job
#SBATCH --output=first-job-%j.out
#SBATCH --time=00:05:00
#SBATCH --ntasks=1
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=1
#SBATCH --mem=1G

echo "Hello from PACE ICE!"
echo "Job ID: $SLURM_JOB_ID"
echo "Running on: $(hostname)"
echo "Started at: $(date)"

sleep 60

echo "Finished at: $(date)"
echo "Your first Slurm job completed successfully."

Save the file:

  1. Press Control+O.
  2. Press Enter.
  3. Press Control+X.

On a Mac, use the Control key, not the Command key.

3. Check the script

Display the file to make sure it was saved correctly:

cat first-job.slurm

4. Submit the job

Submit the script to Slurm:

sbatch first-job.slurm

You should see a message similar to:

Submitted batch job 12345678

Your number will be different. This number is your job ID.

5. Check the job

Show your pending and running jobs:

squeue -u "$USER"

In the ST column:

You can also check one job by replacing YOUR_JOB_ID with your job ID:

squeue -j YOUR_JOB_ID

Wait about one minute and check again. If the job no longer appears, it has left the queue.

6. Find the output file

List the files in the folder:

ls -lh

You should see a file similar to:

first-job-12345678.out

The number in the filename is the job ID.

7. Read the output

Replace YOUR_JOB_ID with your job ID:

cat first-job-YOUR_JOB_ID.out

A successful job should end with:

Your first Slurm job completed successfully.

The output also shows the job ID, compute-node name, and start and finish times.

Commands used in this guide

mkdir -p ~/first-job-demo
cd ~/first-job-demo
nano first-job.slurm
cat first-job.slurm
sbatch first-job.slurm
squeue -u "$USER"
squeue -j YOUR_JOB_ID
ls -lh
cat first-job-YOUR_JOB_ID.out

Run compute jobs through Slurm. Do not run them directly on an ICE login node. PACE instructions can change, so check Using Slurm on ICE when needed.