Job lifetime limits in the RCE
==============================
Have you received an email like this?

.. image:: ./_static/job-is-idle-email.png
   :width: 400px

Instead of requesting that you extend your job, you can now run your job
for as long as it's **active.** An active job is a job which is
performing a computation or currently being used interactively through
its graphical user interface.

If you have a job which you haven't touched for two days, you will
receive a warning that your job will become pre-emptible if remaining
idle for three days.

What does pre-emptible mean?
----------------------------

When the RCE is saturated, meaning that all resources have been claimed
by users, some jobs can be placed back into the queue by new jobs. If
your job has been idle for three or more days, it is possible that,
under these conditions, your job could be placed back into the queue.
Graphical jobs that are placed back into the queue are essentially
terminated. You will lose your work, unless you save it.

**Basic rule of thumb**: If you're not actively using your job, terminate
it. Otherwise, your job will continue to idle and could **potentially**
live forever, unless it is pre-empted by a new job under conditions of
RCE cluster saturation.

How is idle time calculated?
----------------------------
Every five minutes, the RCE calculates the idle time of your job by
examining the amount of cpu usage of your job. This ratio is **so
low** that even clicking on a menu or typing text into your application
is enough to reset your idle counter to **zero.** Idle time is only
evaluated on jobs which are literally **doing nothing.**