Enable Interactive Batch Mode

LSF supports the concept of interactive batch job execution. When a job is submitted in interactive batch mode, it receives the same batch scheduling and host selection services as noninteractive batch jobs, but the terminal from which the job was submitted remains attached to the job as if it were launched interactively.

Interactive batch mode is the only interactive mode Sun HPC ClusterTools 3.0 software supports.

By default, both batch mode and interactive batch mode are available. To select interactive batch mode, include the -I option on the bsub command line. Without this option, bsub invokes conventional batch mode.

The INTERACTIVE parameter in the lsb.queues file allows you restrict a queue to accept only interactive batch jobs or exclude all interactive batch jobs. Use it to restrict Sun HPC-dedicated queues to interactive batch jobs. Otherwise, noninteractive jobs could be added to the queue, which could make the queue less efficient for handling the interactive batch jobs. To impose this restriction, add the following line to the appropriate queue descriptor in the lsb.queues file:

INTERACTIVE=ONLY

All jobs submitted to a queue configured in this way must include the -I option on the bsub command line.

Separate queues can be configured for batch-mode-only jobs as well.

Because interactive batch jobs need fast response times, there are other steps you should take to minimize job launch latencies normally associated with batch queue behavior. These are described in the next section.