Platform LSF Administration Guide Version 6.2

Command-Level Job Starters
Administering Platform LSF
488
Command-Level Job Starters
A command-level job starter allows you to specify an executable file that does any
necessary setup for the job and runs the job when the setup is complete. You can select
an existing command to be a job starter, or you can create a script containing a desired
set of commands to serve as a job starter.
This section describes how to set up and use a command-level job starter to run
interactive jobs.
Command-level job starters have no effect on batch jobs, including interactive batch
jobs. See Chapter 35, “Interactive Jobs with bsub” for information on interactive batch
jobs.
A job starter can also be defined at the queue level using the JOB_STARTER parameter.
Only the LSF administrator can configure queue-level job starters. See “Queue-Level
Job Starters” on page 490 for more information.
LSF_JOB_STARTER environment variable
Use the LSF_JOB_STARTER environment variable to specify a command or script that
is the job starter for the interactive job. When the environment variable
LSF_JOB_STARTER is defined, RES invokes the job starter rather than running the
job itself, and passes the job to the job starter as a command-line argument.
Using command-level job starters
UNIX
The job starter is invoked from within a Bourne shell, making the command-line
equivalent:
/bin/sh -c "$LSF_JOB_STARTER command [ argument ...]"
where command and argument are the command-line arguments you specify in lsrun,
lsgrun, or ch.
Windows
RES runs the job starter, passing it your commands as arguments:
LSF_JOB_STARTER command [argument ...]
Examples
UNIX
If you define the LSF_JOB_STARTER environment variable using the following C-
shell command:
% setenv LSF_JOB_STARTER "/bin/sh -c"
Then you run a simple C-shell job:
% lsrun "’a.out; hostname’"
The command that actually runs is:
/bin/sh -c "/bin/sh -c ’a.out hostname’"
The job starter can be a shell script. In the following example, the LSF_JOB_STARTER
environment variable is set to the Bourne shell script named
job_starter:
$ LSF_JOB_STARTER=/usr/local/job_starter
The job_starter script contains the following: