[Swift-user] Swift/PBS Scheduler Slow to Report "Finished"?

[Andrew Boyce]

Hello,

I am currently running Swift in conjunction with the PBS scheduler. My  
annoyance at the moment is this:

When running any script, even a simple script such as first.swift  
(which normally finishes almost instantaneously), Swift always takes  
precisely five minutes to tell me that my job Finished successfully  
and copy the files back to the appropriate folder. It is always almost  
exactly five minutes; I've checked many logs - it polls the scheduler  
for five minutes. When I run a script (like first.swift) without using  
the PBS scheduler, everything happens as normal; execution and  
"Finished successfully" are nearly immediate.

I think I know what the problem is: even after the scheduler says that  
the job is 'completed,' (which is generally right away) the scheduler  
keeps the job up on qstat and such for 5 minutes after (this setting  
is a PBS server attribute known as 'keep_completed', and I have  
checked that it is indeed set to 300 seconds; unfortunately I don't  
have permissions to change it). So when Swift polls the scheduler, the  
job is still up on qstat, and Swift must think that the task has not  
yet "Finished successfully."

My question is this:
Am I indeed right that Swift does not "understand" that when the PBS  
scheduler says a job is 'completed', the job really has "Finished  
successfully"?
Can this be changed so that Swift does "understand" that a 'completed'  
job has "Finished successfully"?

I have not included any files because I think I have narrowed the  
problem down to a question that does not require those that I would  
usually provide, but if I am wrong, then I can provide.

Thank you and sorry for the length.

Regards,

Andrew Boyce