In the following site you can find an overview on common errors and how to fix them as well as a list of pending job reasons and their meaning.

Many errors can be solved by carefully reading and applying the syntax defined in the sbatch documentation.

  Submission Errors

sbatch: error: Unable to allocate resources: Invalid account or account/partition combination specified

Please follow the correct syntax for accounts:
#SBATCH --account=<project>
#SBATCH -A <project>

Or  follow the correct syntax with valid partitions determined by your project proposal:
#SBATCH --partition=<partition>
#SBATCH -p <partition>

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sbatch: error: Unable to allocate resources: Invalid partition name specified

Please follow the correct syntax with valid partitions:
#SBATCH --partition=<partition>
#SBATCH -p <partition>

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sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Requested node configuration is not available

Please make sure that the amount of total CPUs requested exists within the requested nodes.
Please make sure that the amount of memory per Node exists.

Check the proper syntax:
#SBATCH --ntasks=<CPUs>
#SBATCH -n <CPUs>

If used:
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=<CPUs>
#SBATCH -c <CPUs>

#SBATCH  --mem=<AMOUNT>
#SBATCH  --mem-per-cpu=<AMOUNT> #times the amount of CPUS allocated (ntasks * cpus-per-task)

 Job Failures

Job fails and generates no output files

If the Job cannot write its output to output files specified in the batch script, the job will die and no file will be created.
The job batch script has to specify a valid path to a directory and the file to write the output to, must be a writable file!

Please check typos and the correct syntax of:

#SBATCH --output=/path/to/file/file_name
#SBATCH --error=/path/to/file/file_name
#SBATCH --o /path/to/file/file_name
#SBATCH --e /path/to/file/file_name

Do not use $HOME , $WORK , ~ or similar variables in this output! Only explicit full paths and Slurm % special flags.

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Job fails due to time limit

slurmstepd: error: JOB xxxxxxx ON XXXX CANCELLED AT XXXXXXXXXXXX DUE TO TIME LIMIT 

srun: error: XXXXX : task XXXX: Killed

Slurm allocates ONLY the requested resources defined in the submission batch script.
If your program runs for longer than the originally requested time limit, it will be killed without warning and results from the computation will not be guaranteed.

Please ensure you request enough time (with the correct syntax) for your program to finish computations across all nodes:
#SBATCH  --time=HH:MM:SS
#SBATCH  -t =HH:MM:SS

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Job fails due to memory limit (oom-kill)

 slurmstepd: error: Detected X oom-kill event(s) in XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Some of your processes may have been killed by the cgroup out-of-memory handler.

srun: error: XXXXX : task XXXX: Killed

Slurm allocates ONLY the requested resources defined in the submission batch script.
If your program uses more memory than the originally requested memory limit per node, it will be killed without warning and results from the computation will not be guaranteed.

Please ensure you request enough time (with the correct syntax) for your program to finish computations across all nodes:
#SBATCH  --mem=<size>[units] 
#SBATCH  -m <size>[units]

Or if used:
#SBATCH  --mem-per-cpu=<size>[units]

Different units can be specified using the suffix [K|M|G|T], the default is M for Megabytes (1000M = 1G)

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Job runs but RLIMIT_NPROC is shown as an error

slurmstepd: error: Can't propagate RLIMIT_NPROC of XXXXXXX from submit host: Invalid argument

This is a known problem with our current installation of Slurm and can be ignored. It should also not affect your program or results in any meaningful way.