Configuring SLURM so it requires the user to specify --account - config

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to configure SLURM so that a user is required to specify --account when using the SLURM commands (salloc, sbatch, srun). Effectively I want to disable the default account behavior.
Has anyone out there found a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

I had the same requirement to force users to specify accounts and, after finding several ways to fulfill it with slurm, I decided to revive this post with the shortest/easiest solution.
The slurm lua submit plugin sees the job description before the default account is applied. Hence, you can install the slurm-lua package, add "JobSubmitPlugins=lua" to the slurm.conf, restart the slurmctld, and directly test against whether the account was defined via the job_submit.lua script (create the script wherever you keep your slurm.conf; typically in /etc/slurm/):
-- /etc/slurm/job_submit.lua to reject jobs with no account specified
function slurm_job_submit(job_desc, part_list, submit_uid)
if job_desc.account == nil then
slurm.log_error("User %s did not specify an account.", job_desc.user_id)
slurm.log_user("You must specify an account!")
return slurm.ERROR
end
return slurm.SUCCESS
end
function slurm_job_modify(job_desc, job_rec, part_list, modify_uid)
return slurm.SUCCESS
end
return slurm.SUCCESS
Errors resulting from not specifying an account appear as follows:
# srun --pty bash
srun: error: You must specify an account!
srun: error: Unable to allocate resources: Unspecified error
# sbatch submit.slurm
sbatch: error: You must specify an account!
sbatch: error: Batch job submission failed: Unspecified error
These errors are also printed out to the slurmctld log so that you know what the resource allocation issue was for the particular job:
[2017-09-12T08:32:00.697] error: job_submit.lua: User 0 did not specify an account.
[2017-09-12T08:32:00.697] _slurm_rpc_submit_batch_job: Unspecified error
As an addendum, the Slurm Submit Plugins Guide is only moderately useful and you will probably be much better off simply examining the Lua job_submit plugin implementation for guidance.

Answer 2

One option is to set the AccountingStorageEnforce parameter to associations in slurm.conf.
AccountingStorageEnforce
This controls what level of association-based enforcement to impose on job submissions. Valid options are any combination of
associations, limits, nojobs, nosteps, qos, safe, and wckeys, or all
for all things (expect nojobs and nosteps, they must be requested as
well).
By enforcing Associations no new job is allowed to run unless a corresponding association exists in the system. If limits are enforced
users can be limited by association to whatever job size or run time
limits are defined.
Then, with the sacctmgr command, make sure the default account has no access to the defined partitions. Effectively, the users will be denied submission if they do not specify a valid account.
Another option is to write a custom submission plugin, which you can write in Lua. In that script, you can check whether the --account parameter was set and deny submission with a custom message if it was not.