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Slurm template: Signal SIGINT by default to allow R code to catch it gracefully

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
66/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
r

Research direction

Locate the Slurm template and the resource handling behind plan(..., resources = list(signal = ...)); start by checking how scheduler-specific defaults and explicit signal values are currently passed through. Done means the Slurm default uses B:INT@60 while an explicitly supplied signal remains effective, with relevant existing tests updated or added if the project has coverage for templates.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

feature/resources scheduler/slurm

When a job is approaching it's maximum run-time limit, Slurm sends a SIGTERM 30 seconds before sending a SIGKILL (abrupt; not capturable).

R code cannot handle SIGTERM signals, only SIGINT. If Slurm would signal SIGINT instead, we could capture it internally as an interrupt condition, and using tryCatch(..., interrupt = ...), on.exit(), and likes to gracefully exit, e.g. close connections, checkpoint intermediate results, etc.

Slurm allows us to declare what type of signal, and when, to signal when we approach the run-time limit. This can be done by declaring, e.g. --signal=B:INT@60.

Idea

First, should be able to control the signal explicitly via:

plan(..., resources = list(signal = "INT@60"))

already today.

Second, we could update the default to be signal = "INT@60" by adding the following to the template:

## Resources needed
<%
 ## Default to sending SIGINT 60 seconds before walltime limit 
 ## to allow graceful R-level cleanup/checkpointing
 if (is.null(resources[["signal"]])) {
   resources[["signal"]] <- "B:INT@60"
 }
 ...
%>

Third, alternative to a Slurm-specific resource name, we might harmonize the signal type and signal grace period with what is used by other job schedulers.

Dominant language
R
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87
Forks
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