[OOD-users] no environment set for HPC desktop -- job fails

[John-Paul Robinson]

In our dev environment (slurm with ohpc) we have started to see this 
error when trying to launch interactive desktops:

/tmp/slurmd/job00079/slurm_script: line 3: module: command not found
Setting VNC password...
Error: no HOME environment variable
Starting VNC server...
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set.
vncserver: The HOME environment variable is not set. vncserver: The HOME 
environment variable is


As we understand it, the PUN nginx worker launches the batch job that 
starts the desktop batch job.

The problem seems to be that the environment for the job is empty, hence 
no module function or HOME env or anything else.   We checked the env of 
the users nginx worker under /proc and it is completely empty.   Because 
our job env is inherited from the caller (the nginx worker in this case) 
the attempt to run the module command and vncserver commands naturally fail.

When we launch an interactive terminal, it runs just fine, but I'm 
guessing that's because the interactive session actually reads the 
normal shell startup and builds its environment, even if it happened to 
be missing in the proxy.

Do you have any pointers on what could cause this situation.   We 
noticed it after we started adding additional interactive apps but don't 
have a clear time point.  It was working fine originally and still 
functions fine in our prod env (without any of the additional 
interactive apps).

Thanks,

John-Paul