The standard and correct method for managing specific GPU device allocation in Slurm is through its Generic Resource (GRES) configuration. The slurm.conf file is used to declare that a node has GPUs available as a resource. The gres.conf file is then used to specify precisely which GPU devices on that node should be managed by Slurm. To exclude a GPU (e.g., one used for display), the administrator must explicitly list only the desired compute GPUs in gres.conf using their device files (e.g., /dev/nvidia0), indices, or UUIDs. GPUs not listed in this file will be ignored by the Slurm scheduler and will not be allocated to jobs.

B. nvidia-smi is a monitoring and management utility. It does not integrate with the Slurm scheduler to control job resource allocation, which is determined by Slurm's own configuration.

C. The problem described is a resource allocation policy issue, not a hardware detection failure. Reinstalling drivers will not change which GPUs Slurm is configured to manage.

D. Requesting more GPUs in a job script does not influence the scheduler's choice of which specific devices to allocate from the pool of GPUs it manages.

1. Official Slurm Documentation (SchedMD): The gres.conf manual page explicitly details how to configure specific devices. The configuration Name=gpu File=/dev/nvidia[0-6] on an 8-GPU node would make /dev/nvidia7 unavailable to Slurm.

Source: SchedMD LLC, gres.conf - Slurm configuration file for generic resource management., Section: "EXAMPLES". (URL: https://slurm.schedmd.com/gres.conf.html)

2. Official Slurm Documentation (SchedMD): The slurm.conf manual page describes the Gres parameter within a Node definition, which is required to associate the node with the resources defined in gres.conf.

Source: SchedMD LLC, slurm.conf - Slurm configuration file., Section: "NodeName", Parameter: "Gres". (URL: https://slurm.schedmd.com/slurm.conf.html)

3. NVIDIA Official Documentation: The NVIDIA Base Command Platform Deployment Guide provides a concrete example of configuring slurm.conf and gres.conf for GPU nodes, demonstrating the linkage between the two files for proper resource management.

Source: NVIDIA Base Command Platform On-Premises Deployment Guide, Version 23.08, Chapter 4: "Slurm Configuration", Section: "Configure Slurm". This section shows example configurations for both files.