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Interacting With the Sun Grid Engine Software

QMON, the Grid Engine System's Graphical User Interface

You can use QMON, the graphical user interface (GUI) tool, to accomplish most Grid Engine system tasks. These tasks include submitting jobs, controlling jobs, and gathering important information. The QMON Main Control window is often the starting point for user and administrator functions. Each icon on the Main Control window is a GUI button that you click to start a variety of tasks. To see a button's name, rest the pointer over the button. The button name describes the button function.

Launching the QMON Main Control Window

To launch the QMON Main Control window, from the command line, type qmon.

After a message window is displayed, the QMON Main Control window appears.

Figure – QMON Main Control Window, Defined

The following figure shows the QMON Main Control window along with descriptions of each icon.

Customizing QMON

A specifically designed resource file largely defines the QMON look and feel. Reasonable defaults are compiled in $SGE_ROOT/qmon/Qmon, which also includes a sample resource file. Refer to the comment lines in the sample Qmon file for detailed information on the possible customizations.

The cluster administrator can do any of the following:

• Install site-specific defaults in standard locations such as /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/Qmon
• Include QMON-specific resource definitions in the standard .Xdefaults or .Xresources files
• Put a site-specific Qmon file in a location referenced by standard search paths such as XAPPLRESDIR

Ask your administrator if any of these cases are relevant in your environment.

In addition, users can configure the following personal preferences:

• Users can modify the Qmon file.
• The Qmon file can be moved to the home directory or to another location pointed to by the private XAPPLRESDIR search path.
• Users can include the necessary resource definitions in their private .Xdefaults or .Xresources files.
  A private Qmon resource file can also be installed using the xrdb command. The xrdb command can be used during operation. xrdb can also be used at startup of the X11 environment, for example, in a .xinitrc resource file.

You can also use the Job Customize and Queue Customize dialog boxes to customize QMON. These dialog boxes are shown in Customizing the Job Control Display and in Filtering Cluster Queues and Queue Instances. In both dialog boxes, users can use the Save button to store the filtering and display definitions to the .qmon_preferences file in their home directories. When QMON is restarted, this file is read, and QMON reactivates the previously defined behavior.

Client Commands

The command-line user interface is a set of ancillary programs (commands) that enable you to do the following tasks:

• Manage queues
• Submit and delete jobs
• Check job status
• Suspend or enable queues and jobs

The Grid Engine system provides the following set of ancillary programs:

• qacct – Extracts arbitrary accounting information from the cluster log file. For more information, see Generating Accounting Statistics.
• qalter – Changes the attributes of submitted but pending jobs.
• qconf – Provides the user interface for cluster configuration and queue configuration. For more information, see Using Files and Scripts for Administrative Tasks.
• qdel – Enables a user to delete one or more jobs. A manager or operator can delete jobs belonging to any user, while regular users can only delete their own jobs. For more information, see How to Control Jobs With qdel and qmod.
• qhold – Holds back submitted jobs from execution.
• qhost – Displays status information about execution hosts.
• qlogin – Initiates a login session with automatic selection of a low-loaded, suitable host.
• qmake – A replacement for the standard UNIX make facility. qmake extends make by its ability to distribute independent make steps across a cluster of suitable machines. For more information, see Parallel Makefile Processing With qmake.
• qmod – Enables the owner to suspend or enable a queue. All currently active processes that are associated with this queue are also signaled. For more information, see How to Control Queues With qmod and How to Control Jobs With qdel and qmod.
• qmon – Provides an X Windows Motif command interface and monitoring facility.
• qping – Checks application status of Sun Grid Engine daemons.
• qquota – Shows current usage of Sun Grid Engine resource quotas. For more information, see Monitoring Resource Quota Utilization From the Command Line.
• qrdel – Deletes Sun Grid Engine advance reservations. For more information, see qrdel.
• qresub – Creates new jobs by copying jobs that are running or pending.
• qrls – Releases jobs from holds that were previously assigned to them, for example, through qhold.
• qrsh – Can be used for various purposes, such as the following:
  • To provide remote execution of interactive applications through the Grid Engine system. qrsh is comparable to the standard UNIX facility rsh. For more information, see Remote Execution With qrsh.
  • To allow for the submission of batch jobs that, upon execution, support terminal I/O and terminal control. Terminal I/O includes standard output, standard error, and standard input.
  • To provide a submission client that remains active until the batch job finishes.
  • To allow for the Grid Engine software-controlled remote execution of the tasks of parallel jobs.
• qrstat – Shows the status of Sun Grid Engine advance reservations. For more information, see qrstat.
• qrsub – Submits an advance reservation to Sun Grid Engine. For more information, see qrsub.
• qselect – Prints a list of queue names corresponding to specified selection criteria. The output of qselect is usually sent to other Grid Engine system commands to apply actions on a selected set of queues.
• qsh – Opens an interactive shell in an xterm on a lightly loaded host. Any kind of interactive jobs can be run in this shell. For more information, see How to Submit Interactive Jobs With qsh From the Command Line.
• qstat – Provides a status listing of all jobs and queues associated with the cluster. For more information, see How to Monitor Jobs With qstat.
• qsub – The user interface for submitting batch jobs to the Grid Engine system.
• qtcsh – A fully compatible replacement for the widely known and used UNIX C shell (csh) derivative, tcsh. qtcsh provides a command shell with the extension of transparently distributing execution of designated applications to suitable and lightly loaded hosts through Grid Engine software. For more information see, Transparent Job Distribution With qtcsh.

Distributed Resource Management Application API

You can automate Sun Grid Engine functions by writing scripts that run Sun Grid Engine commands and parse the results. However, for more consistent and efficient results, you can use the Distributed Resource Management Application API (DRMAA). For more information about the DRMAA concept and how to use it with the C and Java ^TM languages, see Automating Grid Engine Functions Through the Distributed Resource Management Application API.

Community Information Members of the Open Grid Engine community might develop bindings for other languages. For information on these community-supported efforts, see http://gridengine.sunsource.net/documentation.html.