When to Use Bulk Operations
Bulk job removal is useful for:
- Clearing test jobs after development work
- Removing jobs submitted with incorrect parameters
- Queue maintenance during system migration
- Recovering from job submission errors
Understanding Force Deletion
The -Y flag on btjdel performs force deletion, which:
- Bypasses normal job state checks
- Attempts removal even if job appears stuck
- Useful for jobs that won't delete through normal means
Bulk Deletion Procedure
This approach systematically processes all jobs in the queue:
bash
# Extract all job IDs to a file
btjlist | awk '{print $1}' > /tmp/job_ids.txt
# Process each job with force flag
while read job_id; do
echo "Deleting job: $job_id"
btjdel -Y $job_id 2>&1
done < /tmp/job_ids.txt
# Verify queue is cleared
btjlist
Selective Deletion
You can adapt this approach to target specific jobs:
bash
# Delete only jobs in "Run" state
btjlist | grep " Run " | awk '{print $1}' > /tmp/job_ids.txt
# Delete jobs older than a certain job number
btjlist | awk '$1 < 50000 {print $1}' > /tmp/job_ids.txt
What This Achieves
After bulk deletion:
- Queue contains only jobs you want to keep
- Stuck or problematic jobs are removed
- Normal job management operations can resume
- System ready for fresh job submissions
This is a administrative tool for queue maintenance, not a fix for underlying scheduler issues. If jobs regularly become stuck, investigate scheduler health and IPC resources.