Exclude (or include) specific nodes in PBS Pro

Question

I'm working on a cluster with 8 nodes; 4 nodes have python and 4 don't. How can I ensure that my python jobs only go to the nodes with python?

• I do not have admin rights on the cluster
• PBS Pro 13.1
• RedHat 5.11

This question has been asked before, but those solutions are not working for me:

• excluding nodes from qsub command under sge
• Exclude certain nodes when submitting jobs with qsub / torque?
• How to submit a job to a specific node in PBS
• http://forum.pbsworks.com/index.php?/topic/107-how-to-exclude-a-specific-node-when-submitting-a-job/

I am able to select a single node using qsub -l host=good_node1. However, I am not able to select a group of nodes or exclude a single node or group of nodes. A subset of the many attempts that have not worked for me:

• qsub -l host=!bad_node1
• qsub -l select=1:host=!bad_node1
• qsub -l host=!bad_node1&!bad_node2
• qsub -l nodes=good_node1+good_node2

Answer 1

In our system, we have a specific property vnode with a unique host name. Let's say you want to exclude a node zubat2. You can exclude the node as follows: qsub -l select=1:vnode=^zubat2

Answer 2

Know that it's a bit late. But the same issue happened and the following works for including a list of nodes (good_node1 and good_node2).

qsub -l select=1:host=good_node1+1:host=good_node2

This worked for pbs_version = 18.1.1.