We had another idea here that might help. Deadline 6.1 has the new asset dependency feature. Maybe you could just set an asset dependency for a file that exists on the same server as the python modules. If the slave can’t see that file, it won’t dequeue the job. You just need to include the “RequiredAssets=…” option to the job info file. If you have more than one asset path, just separate them with commas.
Hmm good idea. Will try that! Problem is that its enough for the slave to try to import a lib once at the wrong moment, and then its stuck in a “module not found” state, even when the server is fully accessible. So later jobs, the check would say “its all good”, but the import would still fail.