rl-standard-launch-leonardo

name

rl-standard-launch-leonardo

description

Launch, relaunch, or sweep STANDARD (non-agentic) SkyRL RL on CINECA Leonardo — GRPO on math/reasoning datasets (gsm8k, MATH/aime) and on-policy distillation (OPD, teacher→student) — via raw `sbatch` of the `hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo/*` run scripts inside the writable apptainer SANDBOX + uv `marin_venv` (NOT `python -m hpc.launch`, NOT a `.sif`, NOT `--rl_use_conda`). Use when asked to run/relaunch a gsm8k or OPD GRPO canary, throughput/accuracy grid, or multi-node RL on Leonardo A100-64GB. Covers the GRPO/OPD knobs, the grid cell structure, the 1-node-vs-multi-node layout, the A100-64GB ceilings, and the no-internet/offline + gcc/HOME/Ray-temp-dir gotchas. For agentic Harbor+Daytona RL, this is the WRONG skill (Daytona needs internet — infeasible on Leonardo).

rl-standard-launch-leonardo

⚠ Before submitting, VERIFY checkpoint/export paths resolve to $WORK ($CHECKPOINTS_DIR), NOT $SF/$SCRATCH_FAST — scratch is 1 TB/over-quota; a ckpt write there fails OSError [Errno 122] Disk quota exceeded mid-run (NOT an OOM). This wiped all 12 Delphi #6279 RL cells on 2026-06-19 (an sbatch hardcoded $SF/rl_ckpts). See .claude/ops/leonardo/ops.md "WRITE-PATH MANDATE"; bake the check into every launch subagent.

Standard NON-agentic SkyRL RL on CINECA Leonardo (A100-64GB, no compute-node internet): GRPO on local math/reasoning parquet (gsm8k, Hendrycks MATH via the aime env) and on-policy distillation (OPD, teacher-logit KL). This is the offline, fully-local path — no Harbor, no Daytona, no terminal_bench, no proxyserver. (Agentic OPD / TBench RL is INFEASIBLE on Leonardo — Daytona is a cloud API and compute nodes have no internet.)

Authoritative source docs (this skill distills them — read for full numbers):

• notes/RL/gsm8k_grid_leonardo/ — grid.md (throughput tables), accuracy_grid.md (pass@8 to convergence), grid_experiment_log.md (bottleneck analysis + methodology), scripts/ (per-cell run_*.sh).
• notes/RL/opd_grid_leonardo/ — leonardo_opd_qwen3_plan.md (OPD mechanism + standup), grid.md (speed×convergence), throughput_grid.md (pass@8-per-GPU-hour).
• Generic Leonardo access boilerplate (ssh/2FA, preamble, code/data paths, step-ca cert, login-node killer) lives in .claude/ops/leonardo/ops.md and CLAUDE.md → "CINECA Leonardo Access". Point there; do not duplicate.

⚠️ The launch mechanism is NOT hpc.launch. Unlike SFT (which uses python -m hpc.launch) and unlike Perlmutter RL (--rl_use_conda), standard Leonardo RL is launched by sbatch-ing a wrapper script in hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo/ that singularity execs a writable sandbox dir (not a .sif) + an external uv venv, and invokes the SkyRL entrypoint directly. The run scripts say so explicitly: "does NOT go through the OTA hpc.py launcher and has NO Harbor/Daytona/terminal_bench/agentic dependency."

1. Cluster + env facts (the canary setup)

A100-64GB, 4 GPUs/node, x86_64, SLURM. Account AIFAC_5C0_290, partition boost_usr_prod. QOS: boost_qos_dbg (≤30 min, ≤2 nodes — canary/grid cells) or normal (longer walls, more nodes; 24h max). See ops.md for the rest.

The RL runtime (from reference_leonardo_marinskyrl_canary):

• MarinSkyRL = marin-community/MarinSkyRL main @ 9bb6d5e (the penfever/working line merged to main; the remote has NO penfever fork), cloned to $WORK/code/MarinSkyRL ($WORK = /leonardo_work/AIFAC_5C0_290/bfeuer00). Distinct from the old $WORK/code/SkyRL. Container --pwd is MarinSkyRL/skyrl-train, so any SkyRL-side fix goes to MarinSkyRL main (NOT penfever/SkyRL).
• Image = a writable apptainer SANDBOX dir, NOT a .sif: $SF/marinskyrl_sandbox ($SF = /leonardo_scratch/fast/AIFAC_5C0_290/bfeuer00), built from docker://anyscale/ray:2.51.1-slim-py312-cu128. mksquashfs OOM-kills on the Lustre login node + hits fatal lustre.lov xattr errors → .sif deferred; a sandbox dir execs fine via singularity exec --nv. Binary is /usr/bin/singularity (SingularityPRO 4.3.1; no apptainer on PATH).
• uv, not conda (SkyRL-native): venv at $SF/marin_venv (uv sync --extra vllm against the committed uv.lock → torch 2.8.0+cu128, vLLM 0.11.0, flash-attn 2.8.3). conda can't satisfy the pinned cu128/flashinfer/torch/vllm/flash-attn graph. The run scripts use $VENV_PY=$VENV/bin/python. (--rl_use_conda is Perlmutter-only; it does NOT apply on Leonardo — verified, the canary uses the uv venv directly.)

The 3 standing gotchas (the sbatch wrappers already handle these — keep them)

1. No compute-node internet → fully offline: HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1, TRANSFORMERS_OFFLINE=1, WANDB_MODE=offline, HF_HOME/HF_HUB_CACHE = $WORK/data/hub. Pre-stage model + dataset parquet on the LOGIN node first.
2. gcc for Triton JIT — the ray base image ships no compiler. The wrapper binds the host miniforge $WORK/miniforge3/envs/otagent/bin onto PATH and exports CC/CXX (gcc 14.3.0) into the container. Also RAY_USAGE_STATS_ENABLED=0.
3. HOME is read-only in-container (${HOME} → /leonardo RO fs). SkyRL defaults export_path / several caches to ${HOME}/... → point HOME=$SF/canary_home + ckpt_path/export_path at writable $SF. The Traceback/FileNotFoundError: '/leonardo/home'/Read-only file system lines under --no-home are benign engine-init noise (tvm_ffi dlpack, vLLM usage_lib telemetry) — ignore them; engine init completes past them. (If ever fatal: VLLM_NO_USAGE_STATS=1, DO_NOT_TRACK=1, XDG_CACHE_HOME/XDG_CONFIG_HOME on $SF.)

2. Pre-launch (login node, tmux)

Run the standard Leonardo preamble (ops.md), then pre-stage offline data:

ssh Leonardo                              # step-ca cert; 2FA once, socket ~8h (ops.md)
# preamble: conda activate otagent; cd $WORK/code/OpenThoughts-Agent; git pull;
#           source hpc/dotenv/leonardo.env && source "$DC_AGENT_SECRET_ENV"  (ops.md)
cd /leonardo_work/AIFAC_5C0_290/bfeuer00/code/MarinSkyRL && GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0 git pull
# Pre-stage on the LOGIN node (compute has no internet):
hf download Qwen/Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct    # → $WORK/data/hub  (the model the cell uses)
# gsm8k parquet → $WORK/data/gsm8k/{train,validation}.parquet
#   (built with MarinSkyRL examples/gsm8k/gsm8k_dataset.py)
# MATH:  build via hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo/math_dataset.py → $WORK/data/math/

All code edits: edit local Mac → commit/push → ssh Leonardo 'git pull' (CLAUDE.md sync discipline — never patch remote files). SkyRL fixes → MarinSkyRL main, pulled on $WORK/code/MarinSkyRL.

3. Launch — single node (the canary + grid cells)

cd /leonardo_work/AIFAC_5C0_290/bfeuer00/code/OpenThoughts-Agent/hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo
sbatch sbatch_gsm8k_canary.sh             # bare canary: 1 node × 4 A100, ≤30 min

The sbatch sets DATA_DIR / MODEL_PATH / NUM_GPUS=4 / CKPT_DIR + the offline env, then singularity exec --nv --no-home --bind /leonardo_work,/leonardo_scratch --pwd $MARIN $SANDBOX bash run_gsm8k_canary.sh. run_gsm8k_canary.sh calls $VENV_PY -m skyrl_train.entrypoints.main_base (NOT main_tbench) with the GRPO knobs.

Canary GRPO config (run_gsm8k_canary.sh, Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct): advantage_estimator=grpo, strategy=fsdp2, colocate_all=true, backend=vllm, run_engines_locally=true, weight_sync_backend=nccl, async_engine=true, 4 inference engines × TP1, use_kl_loss=false, lr=1e-6, n_samples_per_prompt=4, train_batch_size=32, max_prompt_length=512, max_generate_length=512, gpu_memory_utilization=0.70, env_class=gsm8k, epochs=1, logger=console (offline → console, not wandb). Reference run: job 44478923 COMPLETED, 233-step epoch, 9.58 s/step, reward 0.14→0.64, pass@4 0.78.

Grid-cell overrides (the "$@" passthrough)

run_gsm8k_canary.sh ends in "$@" → trailing hydra key=val args override (last-wins). But sbatch_gsm8k_canary.sh does NOT forward "$@" — for grid cells use sbatch_gsm8k_grid.sh (canary sbatch + passthrough + fresh per-cell CKPT_DIR, rm -rf'd before launch — see the Wave-2 cross-cell-resume hazard in grid_experiment_log.md).

sbatch --job-name=grid_cudagraph sbatch_gsm8k_grid.sh generator.enforce_eager=false
sbatch --job-name=grid_tbs128    sbatch_gsm8k_grid.sh trainer.train_batch_size=128 trainer.policy_mini_batch_size=128

The --job-name=grid_<cell> is load-bearing: sbatch_gsm8k_grid.sh derives the fresh ckpt dir from it (CKPT_DIR=$SF/grid_ckpts/${SLURM_JOB_NAME#grid_}). Per-cell ready-made scripts live in notes/RL/gsm8k_grid_leonardo/scripts/run_<cell>.sh; launchers launch_throughput_grid.sh / launch_accuracy_grid.sh + cell catalogs *_grid_cells.txt are in hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo/.

4. Grid structure + what the cells vary

The grids are one-factor-at-a-time sweeps off a base config + combined "promising corner" cells + ceiling probes (full tables/numbers in the source docs). Two distinct gsm8k grids:

• Throughput grid (gsm8k_grid_leonardo/grid.md, 18 cells): maximize sec/step / eff tok/s off the canary base. Varies train_batch_size (32→512), n_samples_per_prompt (4→16), gpu_memory_utilization (0.70→0.85), enforce_eager (CUDA graphs), engine layout (4×TP1 vs 2×TP2 vs 1×TP4), micro_*_batch_size_per_gpu, reshard_after_forward, colocate_all. Winners: enforce_eager=false (CUDA graphs) = −29% sec/step, near-free, always on; 4×TP1 > 2×TP2 > 1×TP4; colocated > disaggregated at 4 GPU. Bottleneck MIGRATES with width: base width is generation-bound (cudagraph fixes it), beyond ~tbs128 it's policy_train compute-bound; never memory-bound (KV <11%).
• Accuracy grid (gsm8k_grid_leonardo/accuracy_grid.md, 20 cells): maximize pass@8 to convergence off the throughput winner combo_C. Varies lr (the dominant lever; GRPO knee at 1e-5, 3e-7 undertrains, 3e-5 unstable), n_samples (n8 = efficiency winner), max_generate_length (gen1024 winner), use_kl_loss/ kl_loss_coef, rollout temperature, eps_clip_high (DAPO), entropy bonus (use_entropy_loss=true, entropy_loss_coef=0.01 = the anti-collapse stabilizer winner), reward shaping. Best: combo_acc (lr1e-5 + n8 + gen1024) → pass@8 ~0.97 but entropy collapses; combo_acc_stab (+ entbonus) holds ~0.95–0.98 WITHOUT collapse.

gsm8k-specific: short CoT (~245–268 tok), so gen512 truncates little; the gsm8k env reward is exact-match ±1; lr knee 1e-5 (two orders ABOVE the OPD knee). Extensions in grid.md cover MATH/aime (real long-CoT, max_generate_length=4096, run_math_grid.sh + math_dataset.py) and model-size saturation (1.5B→32B; 32B OOMs single-node 4×A100-64GB → needs multi-node).

5. OPD — on-policy distillation (teacher→student)

A separate non-agentic RL mode: student (Qwen3-1.7B) generates rollouts; per-token reward = −KL(student‖teacher) over the student's own tokens. Entrypoint examples.on_policy_distillation_logits.main_on_policy_distill_logits (NOT main_base, NOT the agentic main_tbench_opd_logits which needs Daytona). Key knobs: advantage_estimator=no_op, policy_loss_type=importance_sampling, use_kl_in_reward=true, use_kl_loss=false; the FSDP ref worker is loaded with the teacher model + a separate vLLM-served teacher supplies top-K logprobs (teacher.top_k_logprobs).

sbatch sbatch_opd_qwen3.sh                         # smoke defaults (2 nodes, ≤90 min)
sbatch --job-name=opd_q3_full --time=08:00:00 sbatch_opd_qwen3.sh \
  MAX_STEPS=60 EPOCHS=2 TRAIN_BATCH_SIZE=64 MINI_BATCH_SIZE=64 N_SAMPLES=8 MAX_GEN_LEN=1024 TOPK=128

run_opd_qwen3_32b_to_1p7b.sh is env-knob-sized (one script, smoke + full). Layout (2 nodes × 4 A100-64GB): student colocated (FSDP2 ↔ 4× vLLM TP1) on node-0; teacher Qwen3-32B TP2 (32B bf16 ≈ 64GB > one 64GB card → needs TP≥2), own Ray PACK PG on node-1; 2 GPUs spare. Student/teacher share the Qwen3 tokenizer → retokenization is a no-op (Qwen3-1.5B does not exist; 1.7B is the nearest size — documented substitution).

OPD is overwhelmingly teacher-score-bound (90–97% of every step: the 32B teacher scoring every rollout token via prompt_logprobs=top_k). So the speed lever is top_k (superlinear: ~1.6–1.85× per doubling; topk16 ≈ 2.2× faster than topk128, near-lossless on pass@8 at the right lr) and scored-token count (max_generate_length, n_samples). lr is the convergence lever (orthogonal to top_k): OPD knee = 3e-5 (1e-5 too low → nothing learns, 1e-4 diverges). Recommended production OPD: lr=3e-5, top_k=64, n_samples=8, gen=1024, teacher TP2, cudagraph off → pass@8 ~0.75–0.78 @ ~832 s/step. (cudagraph and teacher-TP4 are NON-levers for OPD — student gen is <2% of the step; FP8 teacher is speed-NEGATIVE on A100. See opd_grid_leonardo/throughput_grid.md.)

6. Multi-node (--nodes N, Ray bring-up)

Use sbatch_gsm8k_grid_multinode.sh (gsm8k) / sbatch_math_grid_multinode.sh / sbatch_opd_qwen3.sh (OPD is already 2-node). It starts a Ray head inside the container on node-0, attaches workers on nodes 1..N-1, then launches the trainer on the head with RAY_ADDRESS set. Multi-node gotchas it handles (keep them):

• Cross-node fabric pinned to InfiniBand ib0: NCCL_SOCKET_IFNAME=ib0, GLOO_SOCKET_IFNAME=ib0; head IP resolved from ib0 (not the eno* mgmt addr).
• Ray --temp-dir=/tmp (not Lustre scratch): the AF_UNIX plasma-store socket path <temp-dir>/session_<ts>/sockets/plasma_store cannot exceed 107 bytes, and the Lustre scratch root is already ~55 chars → a temp-dir there overflows. (verify the exact RAY_TMP value in the script before relaunch.)
• For gsm8k/1.5B, multi-node generator scaling does NOT help (it's train-bound, not gen-bound; 1→2 nodes regresses on cross-node FSDP, 8 nodes only breaks even; new limiter = sync_weights). Multi-node pays off only for big models (≥32B, which OOM single-node) or genuinely gen-bound small-model long-CoT.

7. Monitoring + completion

• Monitor detached, self-terminating: poll the %x_%j.out for the per-step WANDB_MIRROR kind=train step=N metrics={...} JSON lines (offline → stdout). Watch timing/step, timing/generate, timing/policy_train, timing/sync_weights; GRPO reward + policy/policy_entropy (collapse guard, mandatory); grad_norm. OPD: distill/token_kl_mean (should DECREASE), teacher/chosen_logprob_mean, entropy. Sweep cadence + cross-cluster checks → monitor-cron-sweep.
• Resume: these run scripts set resume_mode=null (fresh) per cell to avoid the cross-cell stale-global_step resume that voided gsm8k Wave-2. For a genuine resume, set resume_mode=latest and keep ckpt_path stable; for a clean re-run rm -rf the ckpt dir first.
  • ⚠️ DESTRUCTIVE GOTCHA — pass RESUME_MODE/DATA_DIR via --export, NOT positionally. sbatch_delphi_math_rl_multinode.sh reads RESUME_MODE + DATA_DIR from the environment; its positional parser only strips MODEL_PATH/RUN_NAME/STAGE/DATASET/THINK/THINK_MODE/DELPHI_TEMPLATE. Passing RESUME_MODE=latest/DATA_DIR=… as positional KEY=val tokens leaks them to hydra → Could not override 'RESUME_MODE' → head FAILS. (Historically this ALSO meant RESUME_MODE never reached the env, the script fell to its default null branch whose rm -rf "$CKPT_DIR" WIPED the checkpoint before the hydra error fired — silently destroying any resume-from-ckpt. This deleted rlvr7500_w0's global_step_50 on 2026-06-24, forcing a fresh retrain.) FIXED 2026-06-24: the script now has NO destructive default — an unset/invalid RESUME_MODE is a HARD exit 1 before any rm, and the wipe is gated on the EXPLICIT null value (+ non-empty/in-$WORK path guard, a loud WARNING listing the global_step_* it will delete, and a CLEAN_CKPT=0 opt-out). So you MUST now pass RESUME_MODE explicitly even for a fresh cell. Correct form: sbatch --export=ALL,DATA_DIR=<path>,RESUME_MODE=latest sbatch_delphi_math_rl_multinode.sh <positional MODEL_PATH/RUN_NAME/… only> (fresh cell: …,RESUME_MODE=null …).
• 24h wall: boost_usr_prod caps at 23:59:00; OPD full runs (~24 min/step) only fit ~18–20 steps per slot → ckpt every few steps and chain --dependency=afterany:.
• Completion → run rl-agentic-job-cleanup (cancel pending retries, consolidate/upload to HF via the Leonardo sbatch-tunnel — login-node 100s killer, see ops.md — DB register, trace/metrics steps, then rm -rf the dirs). Throughput/accuracy measurement runs with throwaway ckpts skip the upload (no production winner) — only clean up disk.

8. Guardrails

• Launch via sbatch hpc/skyrl_standard/leonardo/sbatch_*.sh, NOT python -m hpc.launch, NOT a .sif, NOT --rl_use_conda — Leonardo standard RL = sandbox-dir + uv venv.
• Fully offline — pre-stage model + parquet on the login node; HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1, WANDB_MODE=offline; the /leonardo/home RO FileNotFoundError/Traceback lines are benign engine-init noise (§1.3).
• Grid cells need sbatch_gsm8k_grid.sh (the "$@"-forwarding wrapper) + a unique --job-name=grid_<cell> → fresh per-cell ckpt dir; the bare canary sbatch does NOT forward overrides. Never share a ckpt dir across cells (Wave-2 lesson).
• A100-64GB single-node ceilings: gpu_memory_utilization ≤ 0.85 (≥0.90 OOMs eval); dense ≥32B and MoE 30B-A3B OOM single-node (32B at FSDP4 backward / weight-sync broadcast) → multi-node/disaggregated.
• Never alter hparams mid-series (controlled grid) — flag + propose a separate cell. Entropy/log-ratio/grad-norm are mandatory monitoring columns.
• Multi-node: ib0 NICs + Ray --temp-dir short path (107-byte AF_UNIX limit).
• SkyRL fixes → MarinSkyRL main (the --pwd), pushed + pulled on Leonardo; never patch remote files.
• Agentic RL (Harbor/Daytona/TBench) is INFEASIBLE on Leonardo (no compute-node internet) — that is a different skill, not this one.