Re: [HTCondor-users] RESERVED_SWAP

[Greg Thain <gthain@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 02/19/2016 02:40 PM, Brian Bockelman wrote:

I found and was all set to add the RESERVED_SWAP knob to my config file  — because yes we have thrown both more memory and more swap space onto the test systsem, and we think it is enough to handle just about every case, but it looked like this RESERVED_SWAP knob would be that last extra safety net (especially since the team writing the calibration software is not done yet :) ) ,    but I see in the v8.4 manual that a comment has been added that says "It is anticipated that this configuration variable will no longer be used in the near future. “

Note that RESERVED_SWAP is a parameter that is only evaluated on the _submit_ side, and is intended to be a circuit-breaker to prevent too many shadows from consuming all the memory on a submit machine.  We believe that the MAX_JOBS_RUNNING parameter is now a better way to limit the number of running shadows.

To limit usage of jobs on execute machine, as Brian says, cgroups are a good way to do it, if you have a modern enough linux, or with startd policy, which works everywhere, but requires polling.

-greg