RELEASE NOTES FOR SLURM VERSION 1.2
15 December 2006 (through 1.2.0-pre10)


IMPORTANT NOTE:
SLURM state files in version 1.2 are different from those of version 1.1.
After installing SLURM version 1.2, plan to restart without preserving 
jobs or other state information. Restart daemons with the "-c" option or 
use "/etc/init.d/slurm startclean".

NEW COMMANDS

* Several new commands have been added to perform individual srun functions.
  The srun command will continue to exist, but these commands may offer 
  greater clarity and ease of use. The srun options --allocate, --attach, 
  and --batch will eventially cease being supported. The new commands are 
  salloc  - Create a job allocation (functions like "srun --allocate")
  sattach - Attach to an existing job step (functions like "srun --attach")
  sbatch  - Submit a batch job script (functions like "srun --batch")
  See the indivual man pages for more information. 

* A new GUI is available for viewing and modifying state information, sview.
  Note that sview will only be built on systems which have libglade-2.0 and 
  gtk+-2.0 installed.


CONFIGURATION FILE CHANGES

* The slurm.conf configuration file now supports a "Include" directive to
  include other files inline.

* Added new configuration parameter MessageTimeout (replaces #define in the
  code).

* Added new configuration parameter MailProg (in case mail program is not
  at "/bin/mail").

* Added new configuration parameter TaskPluginParam (for future use, to 
  control which task affinity functions are used, "cpusets" or "sched" for 
  schedsetaffinity).

* Removed defunct configuration parameter, ShedulerAuth. It has been rendered 
  obsolute by the new wiki.conf file.

* Several new configuration parameters can be used to specify architectural
  details of the nodes: Sockets, CoresPerSocket, and ThreadsPerCore.
  For multi-core systems, these parameters will typically need to be 
  specified in the configuration file.

* For select/cons_res, an assortment of consumable resources can be supported 
  including: CPUs, cores, socekts and/or memory. See new configuration 
  parameter SelectTypeParameters.

* For BlueGene systems only: Alternate BlrtsImage, LinuxImage, MloaderImage,
  and RamDiskImage file can be specified along with specific groups that 
  can use them.

OTHER CHANGES

* Several srun options are available to control layout of tasks across the 
  cores on a node: --extra-node-info, --ntasks-per-node, --sockets-per-node,
  --cores-per-socket, --threads-per-core, --minsockets, --mincores, 
  --minthreads, --ntasks-per-socket, --ntasks-per-core, and --ntasks-per-node.

* New scontrol, sinfo and squeue options can be used to view socket, core,
  and task details by job and/or node.

* The scontrol and squeue commands will provide a more detailed explanation 
  of why a job was put into FAILED state.

* Permit batch jobs to be requeued ("scontrol requeue <jobid>" or
  "srun --batch --no-requeue ..." to prevent).

* View a job's exit code using "scontrol show job".

* Added "account" field to job and step accounting information and sacct output.

* Added new job field, "comment". Set by srun, salloc and sbatch. View
  with "scontrol show job". Used by sched/wiki2.

* Added support for OS X operaing system.

* A job step's actual run time is mantained with suspend/resume use.

* Added support for Portable Linux Processor Affinity in the task/affinity 
  plugin (PLPA, see http://www.open-mpi.org/software/plpa).

* There is a new version of the Wiki scheduler plugin to interface with
  the Moab Scheduler. It can be accessed with the slurm.conf parameter 
  "SchedulerType=sched/wiki2". Continue using "SchedulerType=sched/wiki"
  for the Maui Scheduler at this time and see the section below for details. 
  If you use sched/wiki2, you will at least need to add a wiki.conf file. 
  Key differences include:
  - Node and job data returned is correct (several errors in old plugin)
  - Node data includes partition information (CCLASS field)
  - Improved error handling
  - Support added for configuration file ("wiki.conf" in same directory
    as "slurm.conf" file, see "man wiki.conf" for details)
  - Support added for job modify, suspend/resume, and requeue
  - Authentication of communications now supported
  - Notification of scheduler on events (job submitted or termination)
  - There is no longer a "sched-wiki" RPM. All files are in the main RPM.

* The sched/wiki plugin has been re-written for use with the Maui Scheduler.
  Some time in early 2007 the Maui Scheduler should be upgraded to use 
  the additional capabilities offered by sched/wiki2. Changes in sched/wiki
  include:
  - Node and job data returned is correct (several errors in old plugin)
  - Support added for configuration file ("wiki.conf" in same directory
    as "slurm.conf" file, see "man wiki.conf" for details). Currently 
    wiki.conf is only used to store an authentication key, which is not 
    used by most versions of the Maui Scheduler.
  - There is no longer a "sched-wiki" RPM. All files are in the main RPM.

* The features associated with a node can now be changed using the 
  "scontrol update" and "sview" commands.

* For BlueGene system only: Added "--reboot" option to srun, salloc, and 
  sbatch commands to force booting of nodes before starting the job.

* Added "scontrol listpids" command to identify processes associated with 
  specific jobs and/or steps.
  
See the file NEWS for more details.
