If the AccountingStorageType in the slurm.conf file is set to "accounting_storage/filetxt", the accounting log file is written as a plain text ASCII file. The fields in this file are delimited with space characters. If the account string contains embedded spaces, sacct will only display the characters up to the first space.
I propose adding a note to the "sacct" documentation to document this and recommend using database accounting if embedded spaces are needed. The diff is against Slurm version 2.3.0-pre3. Index: sacct.1 =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/slurm/slurm/doc/man/man1/sacct.1,v retrieving revision 1.1.1.31 diff -u -r1.1.1.31 sacct.1 --- sacct.1 3 Mar 2011 19:15:52 -0000 1.1.1.31 +++ sacct.1 7 Mar 2011 21:07:39 -0000 @@ -33,6 +33,14 @@ result in some \f3sacct\fP output differing from that of other SLURM commands. .TP \f3Note: \fP\c +If the AccountingStorageType is set to "accounting_storage/filetxt", +account names containing embedded space characters will not be +displayed correctly by sacct. Only the portion of the name up to the +first space will be shown. If account names with embedded spaces are +needed, it is recommended that a database type of accounting storage +be configured. +.TP +\f3Note: \fP\c Much of the data reported by \f3sacct\fP has been generated by the \f2wait3()\fP and \f2getrusage()\fP system calls. Some systems gather and report incomplete information for these calls; -Don Albert-
