Software/Geant4/UCL HEP Batch Farm

This page describes how to run a Geant4 simulation on the HEP Batch Farm.

Keep in mind that the current maximum CPU time for jobs on the batch farm is 120 hours. It is therefore important to split the simulation into jobs that do not exceed this time limit.

Sending jobs to the batch farm

Jobs are submitted to the batch farm by using the command qsub. Type man qsub to see the available options. The submission of one such script corresponds to one job.

qsub name-of-bash-script.sh

In order to submit multiple jobs to the batch farm, this command can be put in a loop over the list of the batch jobs.

Sourcing the pbt production environment

The submitted bash script needs to load the pbt production environment (SL6) before you can direct into your build directory and run the compiled simulation. This can be done in the following way:

scl enable devtoolset-3 bash <<EOF 
source /unix/pbt/software/scripts/prod-sl6/pbt-prod-sl6.bashrc
cd /your/simulation/build/directory
./name-of-executable-simulation
EOF

scl enable devtoolset-3 bash provides the new gcc compiler and the use of the here document <<EOF ... EOF makes sure the following block of code is executed in the new environment.