Getting ready to run PBS batch jobs

To be able to run PBS jobs, you must check your .bash_profile and .bashrc files carefully. Any command that manipulates the terminal must be put in a conditional statement of the following form.

if test "$PBS_ENVIRONMENT" = "PBS_INTERACTIVE" -o -z "$PBS_ENVIRONMENT"
then
# set up the prompt to the hostname
#
PS1="[\u@\h \W]":
fi

The reason is that there is no terminal when you are running in batch mode. If you try to manipulate the terminal in batch mode, your login will fail and your batch job will not run. The environment variable PBS_ENVIRONMENT is set by PBS to be either PBS_INTERACTIVE or PBS_BATCH. When you are not running under PBS, then the variable is unset.