From Debian Clusters

This is the third part of a four part tutorial on installing and configuring a queuing system and scheduler. The full tutorial includes:

• Using a Scheduler and Queue
• Resource Manager: Torque
• Scheduler: Maui
• Torque and Maui Sanity Check: Submitting a Job

There is also a troubleshooting page:

• Troubleshooting Torque and Maui

About Maui

The Maui Cluster Scheduler, or just Maui for short, is a cluster scheduler from Cluster Resources. Maui needs to be installed on just the head node, and then Torque is used to submit jobs to this scheduler. Maui manages the clients by way of the pbs_moms.

Installing Maui

To get Maui, first visit http://www.clusterresources.com/downloads/maui/temp/ and find the most recent version of it. At the time if this writing, that happens to be the 27-Jun-2007 snapshot. Copy the link for the location of the file. From /usr/local/src/, issue the following command for the most current file:

wget http://www.clusterresources.com/downloads/maui/temp/maui-3.2.6p20-snap.1182974819.tar.gz

Next, untar the file with

tar xvf maui-3.2.6p20-snap.1182974819.tar.gz

Move into the directory that that just created with cd maui-*. We're ready to run ./configure (as part of the Source Installation Paradigm, which you might want to check out if this seems unfamiliar to you). We'll add a number of arguments. To see all of the possible arguments, type ./configure -help. What we'll use is this:

./configure --with-pbs --with-spooldir=/var/spool/maui/

• --with-pbs makes it compatible with Torque
• --with-spooldir sets it to use /var/spool/maui as its home directory

If it finishes successfully, you'll see a message and a confirmation, as shown below.

configure: NOTE:  link 'docs/mauidocs.html' to your local website for access to 
user and admin documentation
NOTE:  latest downloads, patches, etc are available at 'http://supercluster.org/
maui'

configure successful.

Next, run

make

If it finishes without an error, the make was successful. Finally, run

make install

and again, if it finishes without an error, that's a success. In order for mine to work, I had to edit /var/spool/maui/maui.cfg. (If you didn't change your spool directory during ./configure, yours will be located at /usr/local/maui/maui.cfg.) You should have a line like

#RMCFG[HEADNODE] TYPE=PBS@RMNMHOST@

where HEADNODE is your head node's hostname in capital letters. Comment out this line by adding a pound symbol, #, in front of it. Then create a line below it:

RMCFG[headnode] TYPE=PBS

where headnode is your head node's hostname in lowercase letters.

Starting Maui

Now maui can be started up on the head node. Maui installs the executable to /usr/local/maui/bin, so you'll want to add that as part of root's path. To do this, run

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/maui/bin:/usr/local/maui/sbin

(To make this a permanent addition, add the above line to your ~/.bashrc file.) Then run

maui

You won't get any output from it, but running

ps aux | grep maui

should show maui running now. In addition, running showq should show give you a nice view of jobs in the queue waiting to be scheduled. Currently there are none.

gyrfalcon:/var/spool/maui# showq
ACTIVE JOBS--------------------
JOBNAME            USERNAME      STATE  PROC   REMAINING            STARTTIME


     0 Active Jobs       0 of    0 Processors Active (0.00%)

IDLE JOBS----------------------
JOBNAME            USERNAME      STATE  PROC     WCLIMIT            QUEUETIME


0 Idle Jobs

BLOCKED JOBS----------------
JOBNAME            USERNAME      STATE  PROC     WCLIMIT            QUEUETIME

Sanity Check

By this point, you should have both torque and maui installed. Great! Continue onto the sanity check to make sure they're talking to each other.

References

• Maui - PBS Integration Guide