As described in http://forge.gridforum.org/tracker/?aid=309 it would be useful for drmaa to provide a mechanism that an application can use to determine why a job was aborted. The existing proposal is to add a string output argument to drmaa_wait() that provides text information in case drmaa_wifaborted()==true My counter-proposal is to introduce a new function that can be called after drmaa_wifaborted()==true to obtain the reason the job was aborted. (Similar to how drmaa_wexitstatus() can be called after dramm_wifexited()==true to obtain the actual exit status) int drmaa_wabortreason( char* abort_reason, /*OUT*/ size_t abort_reason_len, /*IN*/ int stat, /*IN*/ char* error_diagnosis, /*OUT*/ size_t error_diag_len /*IN*/ ) We should discuss what the function should output if the drmaa implementation does not have any information about why the job was aborted. -Roger