# Determine cause of job failure

**URL:** <https://community.openpbs.org/t/determine-cause-of-job-failure/3651>\
**Category:** Users/Site Administrators\
**Created:** [August 31, 2023, 4:40pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/determine-cause-of-job-failure/3651 "2023-08-31T16:40:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tentpig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Tentpig](https://community.openpbs.org/u/Tentpig)\
**Post date:** [August 31, 2023, 4:40pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/determine-cause-of-job-failure/3651/1 "2023-08-31T16:40:33Z")

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I have several users who are submitting jobs. They change from R to E several times, and then eventually end up in status H.

Although specified with the -o out.txt and -e out.err options, I am not getting any output.

How can I determine why these jobs are erroring out? I have also checked in the pbs\_server.log file, but see nothing there useful

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**Author:** ![speleolinux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@speleolinux](https://community.openpbs.org/u/speleolinux)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2023, 11:13pm UTC](https://community.openpbs.org/t/determine-cause-of-job-failure/3651/2 "2023-09-04T23:13:29Z")

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There is a utility called tracejob (/opt/pbs/bin/tracejob) which will be on the head node as it comes from the PBS server package. man tracejob will tell you the details.  
e.g. tracejob -n 2 123307.hpcnode1  
-n is report information from up to days days in the past.  
That may well give some useful information.  
Mike