Email Configuration of PBS Jobs

20-Dec-2007

Introduction

There is a feature in the PBS resource manager that provides the capability for email notifications to be sent to users when their jobs begin execution, end execution, or abort execution. If you do not specify any email settings in your PBS batch script, this has the same effect as enabling the abort notification possibly to an undeliverable address. This document will detail how to disable or enable this feature in a proper fashion.

Enabling Email Notifications

There are several options available for enabling email notifications in your PBS batch scripts. You can receive email when a job begins execution, ends execution, and aborts execution, or any combination of these. You can also specify the email address that is to receive these notices. Here are some of the options you can use in your PBS batch script:

PBS option	Comment
#PBS -m bae	Receive email when a job begins (b), aborts (a), ends (e).
#PBS -m e	Receive email when a job ends (e) only.
#PBS -m a	Receive email when a job aborts (a) only. Without the -m option, this is the default behavior.
#PBS -M username@rice.edu	Send all email notifications to the email address that you specify. Without the -M option, the job manager will assign an address based on your username which might be an undeliverable address.

NOTE: If you decide to enable email notifications, please be sure to specify a valid email address. Omitting an address or specifying a bad address will result in the cluster attempting to deliver your email to an address that might be invalid!

WARNING: Enabling email notifications can result in a storm of email messages being received by your inbox if you are submitting large numbers of jobs. Good practice would be to disable email notifications if you are submitting more than 50 jobs at a time.

Disabling Email Notifications

If you do not want any email notifications of any kind, you must explicitly turn off email notifications with the following option:

PBS option	Comment
#PBS -m n	Set email notification to no (n).

NOTE: Failure to specify this option will cause email notifications for job aborts to be turned on, whether you have specified an email address with -M or not.