gres.conf

gres.conf is an ASCII file which describes the configuration of generic resources on each compute node. Each node must contain a gres.conf file if generic resources are to be scheduled by Slurm. The file location can be modified at system build time using the DEFAULT_SLURM_CONF parameter or at execution time by setting the SLURM_CONF environment variable. The file will always be located in the same directory as the slurm.conf file. If generic resource counts are set by the gres plugin function node_config_load(), this file may be optional.

Parameter names are case insensitive. Any text following a "#" in the configuration file is treated as a comment through the end of that line. Changes to the configuration file take effect upon restart of Slurm daemons, daemon receipt of the SIGHUP signal, or execution of the command "scontrol reconfigure" unless otherwise noted.

The overall configuration parameters available include:

Count

Number of resources of this type available on this node. The default value is set to the number of File values specified (if any), otherwise the default value is one. A suffix of "K", "M", "G", "T" or "P" may be used to multiply the number by 1024, 1048576, 1073741824, etc. respectively.

Cores

Specify the first thread CPU index numbers for the specific cores which can use this resource. For example, it may be strongly preferable to use specific cores with specific devices (e.g. on a NUMA architecture). Multiple cores may be specified using a comma delimited list or a range may be specified using a "-" separator (e.g. "0,1,2,3" or "0-3"). If specified, then only the identified cores can be allocated with each generic resource; an attempt to use other cores will not be honored. If not specified, then any core can be used with the resources, which also increases the speed of Slurm's scheduling algorithm. If any core can be effectively used with the resources, then do not specify the cores option for improved speed in the Slurm scheduling logic.

NOTE: If your cores contain multiple threads only list the first thread of each core. The logic is such that it uses core instead of thread scheduling per GRES.

File

Fully qualified pathname of the device files associated with a resource. The file name parsing logic includes support for simple regular expressions as shown in the example. This field is generally required if enforcement of generic resource allocations is to be supported (i.e. prevents a users from making use of resources allocated to a different user). If File is specified then Count must be either set to the number of file names specified or not set (the default value is the number of files specified). Slurm must track the utilization of each individual device If device file names are specified, which involves more overhead than just tracking the device counts. Use the File parameter only if the Count is not sufficient for tracking purposes. NOTE: If you specify the File parameter for a resource on some node, the option must be specified on all nodes and Slurm will track the assignment of each specific resource on each node. Otherwise Slurm will only track a count of allocated resources rather than the state of each individual device file.

Name

Name of the generic resource. Any desired name may be used. Each generic resource has an optional plugin which can provide resource-specific options. Generic resources that currently include an optional plugin are:

NodeName

An optional NodeName specification can be used to permit one gres.conf file to be used for all compute nodes in a cluster by specifying the node(s) that each line should apply to. The NodeName specification can use a Slurm hostlist specification as shown in the example below.

Type

An arbitrary string identifying the type of device. For example, a particular model of GPU. If Type is specified, then Count is limited in size (currently 1024).

##################################################################
# Slurm's Generic Resource (GRES) configuration file
##################################################################
# Configure support for our four GPUs
Name=gpu Type=gtx560 File=/dev/nvidia0 CPUs=0,1
Name=gpu Type=gtx560 File=/dev/nvidia1 CPUs=0,1
Name=gpu Type=tesla File=/dev/nvidia2 CPUs=2,3
Name=gpu Type=tesla File=/dev/nvidia3 CPUs=2,3
Name=bandwidth Count=20M

##################################################################
# Slurm's Generic Resource (GRES) configuration file
# Use a single gres.conf file for all compute nodes
##################################################################
NodeName=tux[0-15] Name=gpu File=/dev/nvidia[0-3]
NodeName=tux[16-31] Name=gpu File=/dev/nvidia[0-7]

Copyright (C) 2010 The Regents of the University of California. Produced at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (cf, DISCLAIMER).
Copyright (C) 2010-2014 SchedMD LLC.

This file is part of Slurm, a resource management program. For details, see <https://slurm.schedmd.com/>.

Slurm is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Slurm is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

slurm.conf(5)