Subject: Brief summary of queue systems.

From: "Lic. Domingo M. Vera" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 11:28:12 -0500 (AST)

Dear CCLers

	Last week, I have posted a question about queue systems for submitting
heavy computational chemistry jobs. Many thanks to all who responded, 
specially to Dr. Rick Venable - I'm now installig his program batchq. I have
summarised the replies and added some comments and also a pointer to another 
software. I acknowledge help in dealing with NQS from Dr. Michael Hartmann. 

======================= MY ORIGINAL QUESTION ============================== 
Dear CCLers

	I have shipped an executable (no code available) version of a popular
computational methods package for a Hewlett-Packard HP9000 735, with a rather
small amount of physical memory. As you may guess ... now I need
urgently a good queue system.
	I appologize if my limitation seems to be specific, but I think
that the problem of finding an adequate queue manager should be very
common for computational chemists.
	Does anybody know a queue system that can be installed on a HP-UX
or any machine running gcc (GNU-C compiler)?
	Either binaries or source codes are welcome, but I'm specially
interested in those programs which can run on a HP9000 box. I know that
NQS is really excellent (we installed it on a DEC Alpha / OSF/1 running
Gaussian) but its source-code distribution needs several optional C modules 
installed (for example, ANSI-C support); I was trying to make it with gcc 
without success. Condor is another option I know, but it needs to 
recompile the program with special linking (then it is not suitable without 
the complete source code).
	Thanks in advance. I'll sumarize the answers if you find it useful.
        ...
======================== THE ANSWERS ===================================== 
 ..........................................................................
# from Sean Fox. Software: built-in batch (most Unix platforms)

You're probably already aware of this but (since you didn't mention it)
there's always batch.  It has almost no features and hardly deserves to be
called a queueing system.  But if all you want is something that'll let you
line up jobs to be executed serially it does the trick.  The best part is,
of course, that it's already installed as part of HP-UX.

Sean Fox
Academic Computing Coordinator
Carleton College
[email-masked]

# It's a good idea. But when a single job can be running for
# several days, the checkpointing and interleaving between jobs (and user
# interleaving) are required features.
# NQS can do it. When the system have enough resources and it is
# possible to get two or more queues running, batch can be the solution; 
# better, as you said, it's already installed.

 ..........................................................................
# from Rick Venable. Software: batchq (most Unix machines)

I wrote a generic Unix batch queue system, using

- /bin/csh scripts
- a Fortran program
- the 'cron' facility

It should work on just about any Unix system, although it was developed
under HP-UX; it has the following features:

- jobs for a specific userid run in the order they were submitted
- user interleaving; the pending list is re-sorted to prevent a single
	user from monopolizing a given queue

It is available (caveat emptor) at URL

ftp://deimos.cber.nih.gov/pub

	(or ftp to deimos.cber.nih.gov and login as anonymous)

The entire bundle is in batchq.tar.Z, and the subdir batchq has all of the
individual components.  It may require some minor changes to the csh
scripts; for example, HP-UX uses 'remsh' for a remote shell, while other
versions of Unix use 'rsh' instead. 

--
Rick Venable                  =====\     |=|    "Eschew Obfuscation"
FDA/CBER Biophysics Lab       |____/     |=|
Bethesda, MD  U.S.A.          |   \  /   |=|  ( Not an official statement or
[email-masked]       \/    |=|    position of the FDA; for that,
http://nmr1.cber.nih.gov/venable.html    |=|    see   http://www.fda.gov  )

 ........................................................................
# from Bill Ross. Soft: PBS (ported for various platforms)

See PBS - successor to NQS at the place that invented NQS:
http://www.nas.nasa.gov

Bill Ross

 ........................................................................
# from Jochen Kuepper. Soft: just the NQS (problems in HP-UX with standar C 
# compiler, ported for HP-UX, AIX, DEC Alpha, Linux, BSD, Solaris, SunOs,
# Irix, MIPS, Ultrix, Unicos).

Try NQS, it's the best queue system I know.
The source code is freely distrubuted, find it via any search engine. The latest 
version I Know of is like 3.50.

Jochen

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jochen Kuepper

  Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf   [email-masked]
  Institut fuer Physikalische Chemie I
  Universitaetsstrasse 1, Geb 26.43.02.19   phone ++49-211-8113681
  40225 Duesseldorf                         fax   ++49-211-8115195
  Germany
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 ........................................................................
# I also found a sophisticated network-oriented queue system called
# Condor. It is already ported for HP-UX 9.05 and -if you are a HP-UX user-
# you can just install the binaries.

	The file is:
	hpux/Distributed/condor-4.5/condor-4.5-sd-9.01.tar.gz 
at the ftp server
	hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de and its mirrors

# If you want Condor for another platform, you can download 
# the README file (I think it has the main ftp address) from 
# the same URL.
# Note: you must have the sources and makefiles of the programs you want to
# run under Condor.

Thank you.
Mariano.

D. Mariano A. Vera
Fac. de Cs. Quimicas. U.N.C.
Cordoba, Argentina.
54-51-334170
[email-masked]