Exit Codes ¶

slurmq uses standard exit codes for scripting.

Exit code reference ¶

Code	Meaning	When
0	Success	Command completed successfully
1	Error	Configuration error, Slurm error, etc.
2	Quota exceeded	With `--quiet` flag only

Usage in scripts ¶

Check success ¶

if slurmq check; then
  echo "Quota check passed"
else
  echo "Quota check failed"
fi

Check specific codes ¶

slurmq --quiet check
case $? in
  0) echo "Quota OK" ;;
  1) echo "Error running check" ;;
  2) echo "Quota exceeded" ;;
esac

Guard job submission ¶

#!/bin/bash
set -e

# This will exit 2 if quota exceeded
slurmq --quiet check

# Only reached if quota OK
sbatch my_job.sh

Quiet mode ¶

The --quiet flag:

Suppresses normal output
Returns exit code 2 for exceeded quota
Still shows errors on stderr

# Silent check
slurmq --quiet check
echo "Exit code: $?"

# Capture errors only
if ! slurmq --quiet check 2>/dev/null; then
  echo "Problem detected"
fi

Error messages ¶

Errors are always written to stderr:

# Separate stdout and stderr
slurmq check > /tmp/output.txt 2> /tmp/errors.txt

JSON error output ¶

With --json, errors are also JSON:

slurmq --json check

{
  "error": "No cluster specified and no default_cluster set"
}

Best practices ¶

Use --quiet for scripts - Clean exit codes without parsing output
Check exit codes explicitly - Don't assume success
Capture stderr - Errors go there
Use set -e - Exit on first error in shell scripts