vovtaskermgr

The main way to start, configure, and stop the taskers is with the vovtaskermgr command. This command acts relative to the VOV-project enabled in the shell where it is issued.

The file taskers.tcl in the project.swd directory stores the configuration information used by this command.

Note: Changes made to taskers.tcl are not automatically propagated to the running vovtaskers. To do this, use the update subcommand.

A vovtasker listed in the taskers.tcl file may be running or stopped. The show subcommand gives information on the running vovtaskers currently connected to the vovserver. The list subcommand gives the names of all the vovtaskers defined in vovtaskers, whether running or stopped.

Starting Many Taskers in Parallel

If you have hundreds of taskers to start, it may take some time. You can speed up the process by running multiple start script with the -random option, which is useful to start taskers in random order.

For example:

% vovtaskermgr start -random &
% vovtaskermgr start -random &
% vovtaskermgr start -random &
% vovtaskermgr start -random &
% vovtaskermgr start -random &
% vovtaskermgr start -random &

Tasker Configuration on the Fly

Many vovtasker characteristics can be changed on the fly using vovtaskermgr configure. For example, you can change the capacity of a tasker, i.e. the maximum number of jobs that the tasker can take, with:

% vovtaskermgr configure -capacity 8 pluto

Setting the capacity to zero effectively disables the tasker:

% vovtaskermgr configure -capacity 0 pluto
% vovtaskermgr configure -message "Temporarily disabled by John" pluto

Tasker Capacity

The behavior of manually overriding vovtasker cores and capacity has been improved. By default, the capacity follows the core count, but it can also be manually set via the -T option or by defining the SLOTS/N consumable resource via the -r option, where N is a positive integer. In all cases, the capacity directly affects the number of slot licenses that will be requested.

Tasker Reservation

Below is an example of using vovtaskermgr to set a reservation on a tasker. In this case, you want to reserve the tasker called 'pluto' for user 'john' for 2 days.

If you wish for the vovtaskers to be reserved when they start, use the -reserve option in the taskers.tcl file.

% vovtaskermgr reserve -user john -duration 2d pluto