Platform LSF Administration Guide Version 6.2

Queue-Level Job Starters
Administering Platform LSF
490
Queue-Level Job Starters
LSF administrators can define a job starter for an individual queue to create a specific
environment for jobs to run in. A queue-level job starter specifies an executable that
performs any necessary setup, and then runs the job when the setup is complete. The
JOB_STARTER parameter in
lsb.queues specifies the command or script that is the
job starter for the queue.
This section describes how to set up and use a queue-level job starter.
Queue-level job starters have no effect on interactive jobs, unless the interactive job is
submitted to a queue as an interactive batch job. See Chapter 35, “Interactive Jobs with
bsub” for information on interactive batch jobs.
LSF users can also select an existing command or script to be a job starter for their
interactive jobs using the LSF_JOB_STARTER environment variable. See “Command-
Level Job Starters” on page 488 for more information.
Configuring a queue-level job starter
Use the JOB_STARTER parameter in lsb.queues to specify a queue-level job starter
in the queue definition. All jobs submitted to this queue are run using the job starter.
The jobs are called by the specified job starter process rather than initiated by the batch
daemon process.
For example:
Begin Queue
.
JOB_STARTER = xterm -e
.
End Queue
All jobs submitted to this queue are run under an xterm terminal emulator.
JOB_STARTER parameter (lsb.queues)
The JOB_STARTER parameter in the queue definition (lsb.queues) has the
following format:
JOB_STARTER = starter [ starter ] [%USRCMD] [ starter ]
The string starter is the command or script that is used to start the job. It can be any
executable that can accept a job as an input argument. Optionally, additional strings can
be specified.
When starting a job, LSF runs the JOB_STARTER command, and passes the shell
script containing the job commands as the argument to the job starter. The job starter
is expected to do some processing and then run the shell script containing the job
commands. The command is run under
/bin/sh -c and can contain any valid Bourne
shell syntax.
%USRCMD string
The special string %USRCMD indicates the position of the job starter command in the job
command line. By default, the user commands run after the job starter, so the
%USRCMD
string is not usually required. For example, these two job starters both give the same
results:
JOB_STARTER = /bin/csh -c