Submit Your First Job

Last updated: 2026-06-04

This page is the shortest path to a first successful batch job on HPC4 or SuperPOD. It keeps the scope narrow: one small CPU script, one sbatch, one output file.

Warning

On SuperPOD, GPU partitions (normal) always allocate a full GPU node. You cannot request CPU-only resources on these partitions. For initial testing, use the cpu partition to avoid unnecessary GPU charges.

Before You Start

Make sure you can already log in to the cluster (HPC4 or SuperPOD). Then confirm one valid SLURM account and CPU partition pair:

sacctmgr show user $USER withassoc

Example output (your account and partitions will differ):

   User    Def Acct     Admin    Cluster    Account  Partition     Share   Priority  MaxJobs  MaxNodes  MaxCPUs  MaxSubmit  MaxWall  MaxCPUMins  QOS   Def QOS  GrpCPUs  GrpJobs  GrpNodes  GrpSubmit  GrpWall  GrpCPUMins
--------- ---------- --------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --------- --------- -------- --------- -------- ---------- -------- ---------- ----- -------- -------- -------- --------- ---------- -------- -----------
   alice        itsc      None       hpc4        itsc        amd         1                                                      normal
   alice        itsc      None       hpc4        itsc       intel        1                                                      normal
   alice        itsc      None       hpc4        itsc     gpu-a30        1                                                      normal

Use your own account and partition values from that output. One tested CPU combination on one account was --account=itsc with --partition=amd.

Warning

If sbatch reports Invalid account or account/partition combination specified, re-check your #SBATCH --account and #SBATCH --partition pair against the output of sacctmgr show user $USER withassoc.

Create the Smallest Useful Script

Create a file named submit.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
#SBATCH --job-name=quick-start
#SBATCH --output=quick-start.out
#SBATCH --open-mode=truncate
#SBATCH --time=00:05:00
#SBATCH --nodes=1
#SBATCH --ntasks=1
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=1
#SBATCH --account=<your-account>
#SBATCH --partition=<your-partition>

echo "Hello from $(hostname)"

This script is intentionally minimal. It only proves that batch submission works and that the job can run on a compute node.

Submit the Job

Submit the script with:

sbatch submit.sh

Expected output:

Submitted batch job 1404973

Replace 1404973 below with the actual job ID returned by your submission.

Optional Quick Status Check

While the job is queued or running, check its status with:

squeue -j 1404973

If the command returns only the header line, the job may have already finished because the example job is very short.

Check the Output

After the job completes, inspect the output file:

cat quick-start.out

Expected output:

Hello from cpu13

Next Step

After this first CPU job works, move on to Job Templates and Control for GPU batch jobs, MPI batch jobs, interactive srun sessions, and squeue or scancel usage.

For more complete SLURM templates, see the canonical example scripts: HPC4 examples (CPU, GPU, MPI, and interactive sessions).

See Also