[Condor-users] preemption (again)

[matthew hope <matthew.hope@xxxxxxxxx>]

I am moving onto testing 6.7.1 and was rereading through the manual
(much better by the way) for a refresher

got to

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/manual/v6.7/7_3Running_Condor.html#SECTION008311000000000000000

<quote>
Reason number 3 is the owner (machine) preference: controlled by the
RANK expression in the configuration file (sometimes called the startd
rank or machine rank). The RANK expression is evaluated as a floating
point number. When one job is running, a second idle job that
evaluates to a higher RANK value tells the condor_ startd to prefer
the second job over the first. Therefore, the condor_ startd will
evict the first job so that it can start running the second
(preferred) job. For more on RANK, see section 3.6.
</quote>

This implies that it is impossible to mantain a tiered ranking (or
indeed any other worker controlled ranking) at the same time as
avoiding preemption...is this correct?

This is a real PITA, can there not be another parameter which allows
the control of this process (akin to PREEMPTION_REQUIREMENTS).

I know I can ameliorate the problem with retirement settings but this
is very annoying.

It is reasonable to assume that just because a machine prefers a job
does not mean it automatically wants to preempt its current one
surely...

Matt