Use qdel to delete all my jobs at once, not one at a time

Question

This is a rather simple question but I haven't been able to find an answer.

I have a large number of jobs running in a cluster (>20) and I'd like to delete them all and start over.

According to this site I should be able to just do:

qdel -u netid

to get rid of them all, but in my case that returns:

qdel: invalid option -- 'u'
usage: qdel [{ -a | -c | -p | -t | -W delay | -m message}] [<JOBID>[<JOBID>]|'all'|'ALL']...
   -a -c, -m, -p, -t, and -W are mutually exclusive

which obviously indicates that the command does not work.

Just to check, I did:

qstat -u <username>

and I do get a list of all my jobs, but:

qdel -u <username>

also fails.

@Sigismondo sorry, I'm not sure what that means. I have very little knowledge with cluster managing (which I don't), I just use it. — Gabriel, Mar 04 '15 at 15:15

score 107 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 10 '18 at 01:02

107

Found the answer buried in an old supercluster.org thread:

qselect -u <username> | xargs qdel

Worked flawlessly.

edited Mar 10 '18 at 01:02

dter

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answered Mar 04 '15 at 15:18

Gabriel

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Is there a way how to skip completed jobs? This solution does work, but outputs a great portion of errors of qdel trying to kill completed jobs.. – Jindra Helcl Apr 16 '16 at 09:53
Mmm I don't really know, sorry. – Gabriel Apr 16 '16 at 13:22
3

Thanks. Just in addition for UGE the option is up-case: qselect -U – teng_wenxuan Oct 23 '17 at 15:31
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link is back online – dter Mar 10 '18 at 00:39
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Use $USER for – ABCD Jun 13 '18 at 04:05
Link is broken. – m13op22 Jul 18 '19 at 15:51
why does `qdel -u ` fail? – Charlie Parker Oct 14 '20 at 16:04
This was a *long* time ago, I honestly don't remember why. Sorry – Gabriel Oct 14 '20 at 18:25

score 61 · Answer 2 · edited May 02 '19 at 17:40

61

Building on what Gabriel answered:

qselect -u <username> | xargs qdel

qselect -u <username> -s <state> | xargs qdel

<state> would be R for running jobs only.

qselect will allow you to select job based on other criterias, like ressources asked (-l), destination queue (-q) ...

qdel -u <username>

will only work with SGE

edited May 02 '19 at 17:40

Jean-François Fabre

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answered Sep 14 '16 at 12:05

Y. Boursin

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why does `qdel -u ` fail? – Charlie Parker Oct 14 '20 at 16:04
the second solution did not work for me... – Maciek Woźniak Nov 21 '21 at 19:04

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 21 '17 at 01:17

14

sometimes a simple grep/cut can help too: qstat | grep $USER | cut -d. -f1 | xargs qdel

This way we can also grep on a particular keyword for the jobs and delete them.

HTH

answered Apr 21 '17 at 01:17

asifzuba

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I use this all of the time because it adds a lot of flexibility for other grep searches. – eclark Jul 14 '17 at 21:21
why does `qdel -u ` fail? – Charlie Parker Oct 14 '20 at 16:04
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You may need to adjust the delimiter and field number depending on what your `qstat` output looks like. For example, for me it starts with two space characters and so I use `qstat | grep $USER | cut -d' ' -f3 | xargs qdel`. – Lino Ferreira Jun 28 '21 at 16:45

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 14 '17 at 15:35

8

Try

$ qdel {id1..id2}

So for example:

$ qdel {1148613..1148650}

answered Dec 14 '17 at 15:35

CiaranWelsh

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score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 29 '18 at 13:35

4

For UGE:

qstat -u | gawk '{print $1}' | xargs qdel

answered Jun 29 '18 at 13:35

teng_wenxuan

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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 17 '16 at 17:37

# Delete all jobs owned by the current user.
# 
# Command breakdown:
# ------------------
#
# qselect
# -u selects all jobs that belong to the current user
# -s EHQRTW selects all job states except for Complete
#
# xargs
# --no-run-if-empty Do not run qdel if the result set is empty
#                   to avoid triggering a usage error.
#
# qdel
# -a delete jobs asynchronously
#
# The backslashes are a trick to avoid matching any shell aliases.

\qselect -u $(whoami) -s EHQRTW | \xargs --no-run-if-empty \qdel -a

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 14 '16 at 15:21

1

Another possibility is to do qdel all. It deletes all jobs from everyone. When you don't have access for other people's job, it deletes only your jobs.

It is not the most beautiful solution, but it is surely the shortest!

answered Apr 14 '16 at 15:21

guhur

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Doesn't work for me. `The job all of user(s) does not exist`. – Scott Warchal Jul 07 '16 at 16:57
Works for me. Even if the system reports "unauthorized," it does as guhur states and deletes only your jobs. – Ghersic Jul 25 '19 at 20:45

score -1 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 13 '17 at 08:24

-1

qstat | cut -d. -f1 | sed "s;   \(.*\) 0;qdel \1;" | bash

sed's power.

answered Jun 13 '17 at 08:24

MrMimic

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score -2 · Answer 9 · edited Feb 27 '17 at 07:17

-2

Just use the following command:

qdel all

It will cancel all jobs running on cluster.

edited Feb 27 '17 at 07:17

Jeru Luke

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answered Feb 27 '17 at 04:14

Viral Solanki

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Use qdel to delete all my jobs at once, not one at a time

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