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Tom Clegg, 06/02/2015 01:55 PM

Jobs API (DRAFT)

Clients control JobRequests. The system controls Jobs, and assigns them to JobRequests. When the system has assigned a Job to a JobRequest, anyone with permission to read the JobRequest also has permission to read the Job.

A JobRequest describes job constraints which can have different interpretations over time. For example, a JobRequest with {"git_revision":"abc123..master"} might be satisfiable by any of several different source trees, and this set of satisfying source trees changes whenever the repository's "master" branch is updated.

A Job is an unambiguously specified process. Git revisions, data collections, docker images, etc. are specified using content addresses. A Job serves as a statement of exactly what computation will be attempted and, later, a record of what computation was done.

JobRequest/Job life cycle

Illustrating job re-use and preview facility:
  1. Client CA creates a JobRequest JRA with priority=0.
  2. Server creates job JX and assigns JX to JRA, but does not try to run JX yet because max(priority)=0.
  3. Client CA presents JX to the user. "We haven't computed this result yet, so we'll have to run a new job. Is this OK?"
  4. Client CB creates a JobRequest JRB with priority=1.
  5. Server assigns JX to JRB and puts JX in the execution queue with priority=1.
  6. Client CA updates JRA with priority=2.
  7. Server updates JX with priority=2.
  8. Job JX starts.
  9. Client CA updates JRA with priority=0. (This is the "cancel" operation.)
  10. Server updates JX with priority=1. (JRB still wants this job to complete.)
  11. Job JX finishes.
  12. Clients CA and CB have permission to read JX (ever since JX was assigned to their respective JobRequests) as well as its progress indicators, output, and log.

"JobRequest" schema

Attribute Type Description Discussion Examples
uuid, owner_uuid, modified_by_client_uuid, modified_by_user_uuid string Usual Arvados model attributes
created_at, modified_at datetime Usual Arvados model attributes
name string Unparsed
description text Unparsed
job_uuid uuid The job that satisfies this job request.
Can be null if a suitable job has not yet been found or queued.
Assigned by the system: cannot be modified directly by clients.
If null, it can be changed by the system at any time.
If not null, it can be reset to null by a client if priority is zero.
input hash Hash of arbitrary keys and values. Any collection UUID appearing here (as an array element or hash value) will be resolved to a PDH in order to find or create a Job record.
It is an error to refer to a collection here (by UUID or PDH) unless it exists and is readable by the submitting user.		 
{
 "foo":"d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e+0",
 "bar":123
}
pure boolean Process is thought to be pure (see below). (TC)What do we do when given two JobRequests that are identical except that "pure" is different?
git_repository, git_revision string Set of git commits suitable for running the job.
git_revision can be either a commit or a range -- see gitrevisions(1).
(TC)Perhaps we should take the opportunity to support these semantics on multiple git repositories per job (#3820).
docker_image string Docker image repository and tag, docker image hash, collection UUID, or collection PDH.
git_checkout_dir, temp_dir, output_dir, keep_dir string Desired paths inside the docker container where git checkout, temporary directory, output directories and keep mount should go.
(TC)What are the defaults? This flexibility seems useful for a job that submits other jobs (like a workflow/pipeline runner) but would be cumbersome to specify every time ("remind me, where does workflow runner X expect its keep mount to be?).
(TC)What is the significance of output_dir? [How] does Crunch merge the content of the output_dir and the value of the output attribute to arrive at the final output?
stdin string A file in Keep that should sent to standard input.
Given as an absolute path (relative to the container filesystem root).
The process must not rely on stdin being a regular file (the system is not required to set up stdin so that it's seekable.)
This cannot be used to make additional inputs available to the process beyond those listed in the input hash.
(TC)If given as a relative path, relative to where?
(TC)How does stdin refer to one of the inputs in the input hash?
(TC)If the job does not finish reading it, is that an error, like set -o pipefail in bash?
/data/foo.txt
stdout string A filename in the output directory to which standard output should be directed. (TC)If this is not given, is stdout sent to stderr/logs as it is now?
(TC)Relationship between stdout and output is unclear. If I specify a "stdout" but the job process sets its output by itself, is Crunch expected to clobber that output with the collection resulting from the "stdout" mechanism?
environment hash environment variables and values that should be set in the container environment (docker run --env)
(TC)If this contains variables already used by Crunch (TASK_KEEPMOUNT), which has precedence?
initial_collection uuid A collection describing the starting contents of the output directory.
(TC)Not a fan of this attribute name.
(TC)Is it an error if this collection is not one of the inputs? Or do all provenance queries need to treat this separately?
(TC)Perhaps better if each input item were available at {job_workdir}/input/{inputkey} and the "preload" behavior could be achieved by setting output_dir to input/foo?
cwd string initial working directory, given as an absolute path (in the container) or relative to {job_workdir}. Default "output". /tmp
output
input/foo
command array of strings parameters to the actual executable command line.
(TC)Possible to specify a pipe, like "echo foo | tr f b"? Any shell variables supported? Or do you just use ["sh","-c","echo $PATH | wc"] if you want a shell?
runtime_debugging boolean Enable debug logging for the infrastructure (such as arv-mount) (this might get logged privately away from the end user)
(TC)This doesn't sound like it should be a job attribute. Infrastructure debugging shouldn't require touching users' job records. An analogous user feature would be useful, but perhaps it just boils down to adding DEBUG=1 to environment?
priority number Higher number means spend more resources (e.g., go ahead of other queued jobs, bring up more nodes).
Zero means a job should not be run. Clients are expected to submit JobRequests with zero priority in order to prevew the job that will be used to satisfy it.		 (TC)Do we need something more subtle than a single number?
(TC)What if a high priority job is waiting for a low priority job to finish?		 0, 1000.5, -1

"Job" schema

Attribute Type Description Discussion Examples
state, started_at, finished_at, log Same as current job
input, stdin, stdout, environment, initial_collection, cwd, command, runtime_debugging, git_checkout_dir, temp_dir, output_dir, keep_dir Copied from the relevant JobRequest(s) and made available to the job process.
output hash Arbitrary hash provided by the job process.
(PA)Changing the basic output type from a collection to a JSON object is important for native CWL support.
(TC)Need examples of how "output is one collection", "output is multiple collections", "output is collections plus other stuff(?)", and "output is other stuff without collections" are to be encoded.
pure boolean The job's output is thought to be dependent solely on its inputs (i.e., it is expected to produce identical output if repeated)
(TC)Is this merely an assertion by the submitter? Is the job itself expected to set or reset it? Does the system behave differently while running the job (e.g., different firewall rules, some APIs disabled)? [Under what conditions] is the system allowed to change it from true to false? Is null allowed, presumably signifying "not known"?		 null (?)
true
false
git_commit_sha1 string Full 40-character commit hash used to run the job. (TC)Should we store the tree hash as well? Or instead of the commit hash, if we prevent the job from seeing the git metadata, which would be good for reproducibility (consider a job that starts by doing "git checkout master" in its working directory).
(TC)Do we need to store git_repository here too? Presumably, the relevant git tree should be in the internal git repository as a prerequisite of Job creation. And if two repositories have the same commit/tree, it shouldn't matter which we pull it from when running the job.
docker_image_pdh string Portable data hash of a collection containing the docker image used to run the job. (TC) If docker image hashes can be verified efficiently, we can use the native docker image hash here instead of a collection PDH.
progress number A number between 0.0 and 1.0 describing the fraction of work done.
(TC)How does this relate to child tasks? E.g., is a job supposed to update this itself as its child tasks complete?
priority number Highest priority of all associated JobRequests

Permissions

Users own JobRequests but the system owns Jobs. Users get permission to read Jobs by virtue of linked JobRequests.

"jobs" API methods

TODO: bring this section up to speed with distinct JobRequest and Job records.

Reuse and reproducibility require some changes to the usual REST APIs.

arvados.v1.jobs.create

Q: How does "find or create" work?

Q: How does a client submitting job B indicate it shouldn't run unless/until job A succeeds?

arvados.v1.jobs.update

Most attributes cannot be changed after a job starts. Some attributes can be changed:
  • name, description, priority
  • output, progress, state, finished_at, log (ideally only by the job itself - should this be enforced?)
  • modified_*
  • Q: (any more?)

arvados.v1.jobs.get

Q: Should this omit mutable attributes when retrieved by a pure job? (Ideally, pure jobs should not be able to retrieve data other than their stated immutable / content-addressed inputs, either through Keep or through the API.)

Scheduling and running jobs

Q: If two users submit identical pure jobs and ask to reuse existing jobs, whose token does the job get to use?
  • Should pure jobs be run as a pseudo-user that is given read access to the relevant objects for the duration of the job? (This would make it safer to share jobs -- see #5823)
Q: If two users submit identical pure jobs with different priority, which priority is used?
  • Choices include "whichever is greater" and "sum".

Q: If two users submit identical pure jobs and one cancels -- or one user submits two identical jobs and cancels one -- does the work stop, or continue? What do the job records look like after this?

Updated by Tom Clegg almost 9 years ago · 6 revisions