A batchtools slurm backend resolves futures in parallel via a Slurm job scheduler
batchtools_slurm(
...,
template = "slurm",
scheduler.latency = 1,
fs.latency = 65,
resources = list(),
delete = getOption("future.batchtools.delete", "on-success"),
workers = getOption("future.batchtools.workers", default = 100L)
)(optional) Name of job-script template to be searched
for by batchtools::findTemplateFile(). If not found, it defaults to
the templates/slurm.tmpl part of this package (see below).
[numeric(1)]
Time to sleep after important interactions with the scheduler to ensure a sane state.
Currently only triggered after calling submitJobs.
[numeric(1)]
Expected maximum latency of the file system, in seconds.
Set to a positive number for network file systems like NFS which enables more robust (but also more expensive) mechanisms to
access files and directories.
Usually safe to set to 0 to disable the heuristic, e.g. if you are working on a local file system.
(optional) A named list passed to the batchtools
job-script template as variable resources. This is based on how
batchtools::submitJobs() works, with the exception for specially
reserved names defined by the future.batchtools package;
resources[["asis"]] is a character vector that are passed as-is to
the job script and are injected as job resource declarations.
resources[["modules"]] is character vector of Linux environment
modules to be loaded.
resources[["startup"]] and resources[["shutdown"]] are character
vectors of shell code to be injected to the job script as-is.
resources[["details"]], if TRUE, results in the job script outputting
job details and job summaries at the beginning and at the end.
All remaining resources named elements are injected as named resource
specification for the scheduler.
Controls if and when the batchtools job registry folder is
deleted.
If "on-success" (default), it is deleted if the future was resolved
successfully and the expression did not produce an error.
If "never", then it is never deleted.
If "always", then it is always deleted.
The maximum number of workers the batchtools backend may
use at any time, which for HPC schedulers corresponds to the maximum number
of queued jobs. The default is
getOption("future.batchtools.workers", 100).
Not used.
Batchtools slurm futures use batchtools cluster functions
created by batchtools::makeClusterFunctionsSlurm(), which are used
to interact with the Slurm job scheduler. This requires that Slurm
commands sbatch, squeue, and scancel are available on the current
machine.
The default template script templates/slurm.tmpl can be found in:
system.file("templates", "slurm.tmpl", package = "future.batchtools")
and comprise:
#!/bin/bash
######################################################################
# A batchtools launch script template for Slurm
#
# Author: Henrik Bengtsson
######################################################################## Job name
#SBATCH --job-name=<%= job.name %>
## Direct streams to logfile
#SBATCH --output=<%= log.file %>
## Resources needed:
<%
## Shell "details" code to evaluate
details <- isTRUE(resources[["details"]])
resources[["details"]] <- NULL
## Shell "startup" code to evaluate
startup <- resources[["startup"]]
resources[["startup"]] <- NULL
## Shell "shutdown" code to evaluate
shutdown <- resources[["shutdown"]]
resources[["shutdown"]] <- NULL
## Environment modules specifications
modules <- resources[["modules"]]
resources[["modules"]] <- NULL
## As-is resource specifications
job_declarations <- resources[["asis"]]
resources[["asis"]] <- NULL
## Remaining resources are assumed to be of type '--<key>=<value>'
opts <- unlist(resources, use.names = TRUE)
opts <- sprintf("--%s=%s", names(opts), opts)
job_declarations <- sprintf("#SBATCH %s", c(job_declarations, opts))
writeLines(job_declarations)
%>
## Bash settings
set -e # exit on error
set -u # error on unset variables
set -o pipefail # fail a pipeline if any command fails
trap 'echo "ERROR: future.batchtools job script failed on line $LINENO" >&2; exit 1' ERR
<% if (length(job_declarations) > 0) {
writeLines(c(
"echo 'Job submission declarations:'",
sprintf("echo '%s'", job_declarations),
"echo"
))
} %>
<% if (details) { %>
if command -v scontrol > /dev/null; then
echo "Job information:"
scontrol show job "${SLURM_JOB_ID}"
echo
fi
<% } %>
<% if (length(startup) > 0) {
writeLines(startup)
} %>
<% if (length(modules) > 0) {
writeLines(c(
"echo 'Load environment modules:'",
sprintf("echo '- modules: %s'", paste(modules, collapse = ", ")),
sprintf("module load %s", paste(modules, collapse = " ")),
"module list"
))
} %>
echo "Session information:"
echo "- timestamp: $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z")"
echo "- hostname: $(hostname)"
echo "- Rscript path: $(which Rscript)"
echo "- Rscript version: $(Rscript --version)"
echo "- Rscript library paths: $(Rscript -e "cat(shQuote(.libPaths()), sep = ' ')")"
echo
## Launch R and evaluate the batchtools R job
echo "Rscript -e 'batchtools::doJobCollection()' ..."
echo "- job name: '<%= job.name %>'"
echo "- job log file: '<%= log.file %>'"
echo "- job uri: '<%= uri %>'"
Rscript -e 'batchtools::doJobCollection("<%= uri %>")'
res=$?
echo " - exit code: ${res}"
echo "Rscript -e 'batchtools::doJobCollection()' ... done"
echo
<% if (details) { %>
if command -v sstat > /dev/null; then
echo "Job summary:"
sstat --format="JobID,AveCPU,MaxRSS,MaxPages,MaxDiskRead,MaxDiskWrite" --allsteps --jobs="${SLURM_JOB_ID}"
fi
<% } %>
<% if (length(shutdown) > 0) {
writeLines(shutdown)
} %>
echo "End time: $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z")"
## Relay the exit code from Rscript
exit "${res}"
This template and the built-in batchtools::makeClusterFunctionsSlurm()
have been verified to work on a few different Slurm HPC clusters;
Slurm 21.08.4, Rocky 8 Linux, NFS global filesystem (August 2025)
Slurm 22.05.11, Rocky 8 Linux, NFS global filesystem (August 2025)
Slurm 23.02.6, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, NFS global filesystem (August 2025)
if (FALSE) { # interactive()
library(future)
# Limit runtime to 10 minutes and memory to 400 MiB per future,
# request a parallel environment with four slots on a single host.
# Submit to the 'freecycle' partition. Load environment modules 'r' and
# 'jags'. Report on job details at startup and at the end of the job.
plan(future.batchtools::batchtools_slurm, resources = list(
time = "00:10:00", mem = "400M",
asis = c("--nodes=1", "--ntasks=4", "--partition=freecycle"),
modules = c("r", "jags"),
details = TRUE
))
f <- future({
data.frame(
hostname = Sys.info()[["nodename"]],
os = Sys.info()[["sysname"]],
cores = unname(parallelly::availableCores()),
modules = Sys.getenv("LOADEDMODULES")
)
})
info <- value(f)
print(info)
}
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