What happens if a Slurm job uses memory than its maximum allowed?

Question

Here How can I specify max memory per core for a Slurm job answers:

You can use —mem=MaxMemPerNode to use the maximum allowed memory for the job in that node.

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My question is what happens if a job requires to use more memory than the maximum allowed memory.

Would the job be terminated by Slurm? or does it continue to run with limited memory, hence it will increase its run time due to limited memory it has?

Answer 1

Depending on the Slurm configuration, it will either

• kill the job (the most common configuration), or
• let the job use all the memory, leading to memory over-usage and swapping, but it will not let the job continue with limited memory.