Feature idea, having an "interactive" mode

[slagelwa]

Since dsub is modeled after qsub, what about the idea of implementing interactive jobs similar to what qsub can do?

As the qsub documentation says:

-I Declares that the job is to be run "interactively". The job will be queued and scheduled as any PBS batch job, but when executed, the standard input, output, and error streams of the job are connected through qsub to the terminal session in which qsub is running. Interactive jobs are forced to not rerunable.

I'd imagine that instead of --wait one could say --interactive to start an interactive job and just like qsub stdin, stdout, and stderr streams could be connected to the dsub process. Of course this would only work for non-batch jobs. I know the implementation won't be the easiest, but I would think that since the --ssh flag is now already implemented you might be able to setup some tunnels to stream the I/O. Or stream the log files straight from cloud storage (yuck).

Why do this? For one, convenience. It gives you the opportunity to test out job and not have to hunt down the stdout and stderr contents in cloud storage. Often find myself doing this when I'm setting up a large batch job. Another reason would be able to quickly run a job on another (presumably more powerful VM) but localize your input/output.