"regular" worker will run one job at a time, services worker will spin multiple tasks at the same time But their setup (i.e. before running the actual task) is one at a time..

oooh thank you, i was hoping for some sort of debugging tips like that. will do.

from a speed-of-clearing-a-queue perspective, is a services-mode queue better or worse than having many workers "always up"?

• try with the latest RC 1.8.1rc2

, it feels like after git clone, it spend minutes without outputting anything

yeah that is odd , can you run the agent with --debug (add before the daemon command) , and then at the end of the command add --foreground
Now launch the same task on that queue, you will have a verbose log in the console.
Let us know what you see

from the logs, it feels like after git clone, it spend minutes without outputting anything. @<1523701205467926528:profile|AgitatedDove14> Do you know what is the agent suppose to do after git clone ?
I guess a check that all packages is installed ? But then with CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1, what is the agent doing ??

i really dont see how this provides any additional context that the timestamps + crops dont but okay.

I think a proper screenshot of the full log with some information redacted is the way to go. Otherwise we are just guessing in the dark

from task pick-up to "git clone" is now ~30s, much better.

This is "spent" calling apt update && update install && pip install clearml-agent
if you have those preinstalled it should be quick

though as far as I understand, the recommendation is still to not run workers-in-docker like this:

if you do not want it to install anything and just use existing venv (leaving the venv as is) and if something is missing then so be it, then yes sure that the way to go

oh it's there, before running task.

from task pick-up to "git clone" is now ~30s, much better.

though as far as I understand, the recommendation is still to not run workers-in-docker like this:

export CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1
  export CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PIP_VENV_INSTALL=$(which python)

(and fwiw I have this in my entrypoint.sh )

cat <<EOF > ~/clearml.conf
agent {
    vcs_cache {
        enabled: true
    }

    package_manager: {
        type: pip,
        system_site_packages: true,
    }

}
EOF

I know that git clone and pip verify all installed is normal. But for some reason in Michael screenshot, I don't see those steps ...

I can see all the steps like git clone,

git clone has nothing to do with "env setup" this is brining the code, you cannot skip that one, that said, this is why the git itself is cached on the host machine, so it is fast

... There may be some odd package that need to be installed because one of our DS is experimenting ... But all that we can see what is happening.

even if everything is preinstalled, it Verifies the packages match, this might take a long time. It's just pip being pip (if you want the extreme try to do the same with conda, that one is even slower)
the output of that verification stage is no new packages are installed (otherwise good thing we checked 🙂 )
bottom line, if you want to skip the pip verification/installation pass CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1

btw: i'm checking regrading the GH issue

We need to focus first on Why is it taking minutes to reach Using env.
In our case, we have a container that have all packages installed straight in the system, no venv in the container. Thus we don't use CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PIP_VENV_INSTALL
But then when a task is pulled, I can see all the steps like git clone, a bunch of Requirement already satisfied .... There may be some odd package that need to be installed because one of our DS is experimenting ... But all that we can see what is happening.
In @<1689446563463565312:profile|SmallTurkey79> case, are you saying the log don't show anything at all ? After it pull the task: 5 minutes pass and no explanation of what those 5min been used for ?

@<1523701205467926528:profile|AgitatedDove14> About why we stay on 1.12.2 : None

thank you!
i'll take that design into consideration.

re: CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL in "docker venv mode" im still not quite sure I understand correctly - since the agent is running in a container, as far as it is concerned it may as well be on bare-metal.

is it just that there's no way for that worker to avoid venv? (i.e. the only way to bypass venv is to use docker-mode?)

would those containers best be started from something in services mode?

Yes as long as the machine has enough cpu/ram
Notice that the services mode will start a second parallel Task after the first one is done setting up the env, if running with CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL, with containers that have git/python/clearml-agent preinstalled it should be minimal.

or is it possible to get no-overhead with my approach of worker-inside-docker?

No do not do that, see above explanation on why CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL does not work in docker venv mode

i designed my tasks as different functions, based mostly on what metrics to report and artifacts that are best cached (and how to best leverage comparisons of tasks). they do require cpu, but not a ton.

just report a single Task as multiple "titles" then each title is it's own step, then inside the "title" they have different seriese

is there a way for me to toggle CLEARML's log level?

Try to set the python master logger base logging level

is there a way for me to toggle CLEARML's log level? I'm doing some manual task-debugging in ipython and think it would be helpful to see network requests and timeouts if they're occurring.

starting to . thanks for your explanation .

would those containers best be started from something in services mode? or is it possible to get no-overhead with my approach of worker-inside-docker?

i designed my tasks as different functions, based mostly on what metrics to report and artifacts that are best cached (and how to best leverage comparisons of tasks) . they do require cpu, but not a ton.

I'm now experimenting with lumping a lot of stuff into one big task and seeing how this goes instead . i have to be more selective in the reporting of metrics and plots though .

what if the preexisting venv is just the system python? my base image is python:3.10.10 and i just pip install all requirements in that image. Does that not avoid venv still?

it will basically create a new venv inside the container forking the existing preinistalled stuff (i.e. the new venv already has everything the python system has preinstalled)
then it will call "pip install" on all the "installed packages of the Task.
Which should just check everything is there and install nothing

If you set " CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1" it will do checks and just use the existing system python environment as is.

, I can get 50 tasks to run in the same time it takes to run a single one? i cant imagine the apiserver being a noticeable bottleneck.

50 containers on a single machine would be fine if you have enough RAM/CPU, and yes they would run concurrently.
regrading the time itself, again the spinup time of a Task should be negligible.
Pipeline tasks are not meant to be "threads" they are meant as different functions you want to run on different machines,
This means that if your pipeline is just a set of simple functions that require no cpu/gpu or IO, I'm not sure pipeline steps is the right way to go

Does that make sense?

what if the preexisting venv is just the system python ? my base image is python:3.10.10 and i just pip install all requirements in that image . Does that not avoid venv still?

it's good to know that in theory there's a path forward with almost zero overhead . that's what I want .

is it reasonable to expect that with sufficient workers, I can get 50 tasks to run in the same time it takes to run a single one? i cant imagine the apiserver being a noticeable bottleneck .

there is almost zero overhead if your docker container alreadyt has everything (including the agent) preinstalled and you set it with CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1
it then should basically just run the code.

im not running in docker mode though

hmmm that might be the first issue. it cannot skip venv creation, it can however use a pre-existing venv (but it will change it every time it installs a missing package)
so setting CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1 in non docker mode has no affect

def seeing some that took 7-8 mins whereas others 2-3...

i just ran a pipeline that took about 2h (more than half this time was just the DAG), with about a hundred tasks. i'm taking a look at them now to see what the logs show for runtimes.

i would love some advice on that though - should I be using services mode + docker and some max # of instances to be spinning up multiple tasks instead?

my thinking was to avoid some of the docker overhead. but i did try this approach previously and found that the container limit wasn't exactly respected.

im not running in docker mode though - im running a clearml worker in a docker container (and then multiplying the container)

BTW: you can also just add -e " CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1" to the docker args (under the Execution tab) to override the setting of the docker.
you can also add " export; " to the docker startup bash script section (do not add "#/bin/bash" , just the actual script) to get a list of all the environment variables inside the docker, just in case

of what task? i'm running lots of them and benchmarking

If you are skipping every installation it should be the same
because if you set CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1 it will not install Anything at all
This is why it's odd to me...
wdyt?

but pretty reliably some proportion of tasks still just take a much longer time. 1m - 10m is a variance i'd really like to understand.

of what task? i'm running lots of them and benchmarking execution times. would you like to see a best case or worst case scenario? (ive kept some experiments for each).

and yeah, in those docs you just linked, "boolean" vars like CLEARML_AGENT_GIT_CLONE_VERBOSE explicitly say true so I ended up trying that pattern. but originally i did try 1. let me go back to that now. thank you.

overall I've seen some improvements in execution time using the suggestions in this thread (tysm!) - the preinstalled libs seem to be helping, though some things are still just unbearably slow (one of my larger pipelines took > 1 h to generate a DAG before even starting...).

@<1689446563463565312:profile|SmallTurkey79> could you attach the full log of the Task?
also I would recommend "export CLEARML_AGENT_SKIP_PYTHON_ENV_INSTALL=1" (not true )
Usually binary env vars are 0/1
(I can see that the docs here: None
never mention it, I'll ask them to add that)

yeah... still seeing variances from 1m to 10m for the same task. been testing parallel execution for hours.