Reference material

Interpretation of ‘state’ of FWs and WFs

Recall that a Workflow is a composed of one or more FireWorks. Both FireWorks and Workflows have a state (status).

You can get the states of FireWorks and Workflows using LaunchPad queries or through the web interface.

FireWorks states

A Firework state represents the status of a single job.

State

Meaning

ARCHIVED

Similar to deleted. The Firework will not run, and its launches are archived (won’t be used in duplicate checking). However, you can still query the Firework. More information here.

DEFUSED

The Firework is canceled/paused. Child FireWorks won’t run (although siblings might). The Firework can be resumed (reignited) later. More information here.

WAITING

The Firework is waiting for a parent Firework to complete. The Rocket Launcher will not pull this Firework until parent jobs complete.

READY

This Firework is ready to run, but hasn’t started running yet. The Rocket Launcher must pull this job and start running it.

RESERVED

(Queue Launcher in reservation mode only). The Firework is waiting in a queue to run. More information here.

FIZZLED

The Firework has failed; it was executed but threw an error during the process. It can be rerun if desired - more information here.

RUNNING

The Firework is currently running. Note that in catastrophic cases, a Firework may display this state even though it has crashed; more information here.

COMPLETED

The Firework has successfully finished running.

Workflows states

The state of a Workflow depends on the states of its component FireWorks.

State

Meaning

ARCHIVED

Similar to deleted. All the individual Firework states are ARCHIVED.

COMPLETED

All the individual Firework states are COMPLETED - the workflow is finished.

DEFUSED

At least one Firework in the workflow is DEFUSED. (If you have a branching workflow, other FireWorks might be running).

FIZZLED

At least one Firework in the workflow is FIZZLED and no FWs are DEFUSED. (If you have a branching workflow, other FireWorks might be running).

RUNNING

At least one Firework is RUNNING or COMPLETED. This state means that workflow has started but is not yet fully complete.

RESERVED

No FireWorks are RUNNING or COMPLETED, but at least one Firework has been submitted to the queue.

READY

The workflow has not started running and no FireWorks are reserved to run.

Reserved keywords in FW spec

The FW spec has certain reserved keywords that indicate special instructions to the FireWorks software. They are listed below:

Keyword

Meaning

_tasks

Reserved for specifying the list of Firetasks in the spec.

_priority

Used to specify the job’s priority. More information here.

_pass_job_info

This will pass a dictionary with keys [“fw_id”, “fw_name”, “launch_dir”] to the “_job_info” key. More information here.

_launch_dir

Pre-specify the directory to run the job rather than using default FW directory. More information here.

_fworker

Used to control what resources run this job. More information here.

_category

Used to control what resources run this job. More information here.

_queueadapter

Special queue parameters for this job. More information here.

_add_fworker

Embeds FireWorker (fireworker) variable inside the Firetask just before runtime.

_add_launchpad_and_fw_id

Embeds LaunchPad (launchpad) and fw_id (fw_id) variables inside the Firetask just before runtime. Not best practice but maybe useful.

_dupefinder

Used to specify a duplicate finder object for avoiding duplicated runs. More information here.

_allow_fizzled_parents

Run this Firework if all parents are either COMPLETED or FIZZLED.

_preserve_fworker

Run the children on the same FireWorker as the parent

_job_info

Reserved for automatically putting information about previous jobs via the _pass_job_info option.

_fizzled_parents

Reserved for automatically putting information about FIZZLED parents in a child Firework with the _allow_fizzled_parents option.

_trackers

Reserved for specifying Trackers.

_background_tasks

Reserved for specifying BackgroundTasks

_fw_env

Reserved for setting worker-specific environment variables. More information here.

_files_in

Reserved for specifying a dict of {name: filename} for input files to be copied from preceding FW.

_files_out

Reserved for specifying a dict of {name, output file name} that can be copied by a child FW.

_files_prev

Reserved for storing the actual full filepaths if _files_out is specified.