Partitioning

Partitions (Slurm’s queues) group nodes so jobs can target a subset of the cluster with -p/--partition. A node joins a partition if it matches either the partition’s hostlist or its label selector. The two mechanisms are independent and combine as a union, so you can mix them.

Label-Based Membership (Recommended)

A partition’s selector is a set of key = value label pairs. A node joins the partition when it carries all of those labels. Nodes declare their own labels when the agent starts:

spurd -D --controller http://10.44.0.1:6817 \
    --label pool=gpu --label rack=a

Repeat --label once per label to set several. The SPUR_NODE_LABELS environment variable sets a single label only (it is not comma-split), so setting multiple labels requires repeated --label flags.

Define the partition by selector:

[[partitions]]
name = "gpu"
selector = { pool = "gpu" }

Every node started with pool=gpu joins the gpu partition, regardless of its hostname.

Why this is the recommended approach: partition membership is decoupled from hostnames. Adding, replacing, renaming, or scaling nodes needs no change to the controller config, the node simply advertises its labels on registration. This suits dynamic or elastic clusters and heterogeneous hardware, where grouping by role (pool=gpu, tier=spot) is clearer and more durable than enumerating hostnames.

Hostlist-Based Membership

A partition’s nodes field is a Slurm-style hostlist pattern, matched by exact hostname after expansion. It is not a regular expression.

[[partitions]]
name = "cpu"
nodes = "cpu-node-[1-64]"

Supported forms:

• Bracket ranges and lists: node[001-003], node[1,3,5-7]

• Comma-joined patterns: gpu[01-04],cpu[01-02]

The special value ALL (case-insensitive) is not expanded; it short-circuits to match every node.

Hostlists are convenient for small, static clusters with stable naming.

Combining Both

Set both fields on one partition and membership is the union: a node joins if it matches the hostlist or the selector.

[[partitions]]
name = "mixed"
nodes = "gpu-node-4"
selector = { rack = "a" }

Here gpu-node-4 joins via the hostlist, and every node labeled rack=a joins via the selector.

The same dual-path matching applies to [[nodes]] config blocks (which set features and weight; see Manual Deployment (systemd)), keyed by names (hostlist) or selector (labels).

Applying Config Changes

After editing spur.conf, apply the changes to the running controller:

scontrol reconfigure

reconfigure re-reads spur.conf and makes the file authoritative: runtime-only changes not reflected in the file are overwritten.

Partition changes apply immediately, and they are the only part of the file that also replicates to follower controllers. Many other sections apply live too, but some are read once at daemon startup and some are consumed by spurd on each compute node — see the configuration reference for the per-field breakdown, the leader-only caveat, and the behaviour when a partition being removed still has active jobs (drain it first).

Verifying Membership

# Nodes grouped by partition
sinfo -o "%P %N"

# Partitions each node belongs to
sinfo -N -o "%N %P"