pbs_comm(8B)

Hey bestie 💖 welcome to the pbs_comm(8B) manual page from PBS Professional. We’re talking about the PBS communication daemon, and yes, it’s giving backend glue with main character energy. ✨

🎀 NAME 🎀

pbs_comm — start the PBS communication daemon. That’s the whole vibe. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

pbs_comm [-N] [-r <other routers>] [-t <number of threads>]
pbs_comm --version

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so the PBS communication daemon, pbs_comm, handles communication between daemons — except for scheduler-server and server-server communication, which uses TCP. No cap. 🫶

The server, scheduler, and MoMs are connected by one or more pbs_comm daemons. It’s literally the friend group that keeps everyone talking. 💬

Available on Linux only. That’s the vibe check: Linux only. 💀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -N — runs the communication daemon in standalone mode. Solo main character energy. 👑
• -r <other routers> — list of other pbs_comm daemons to which this pbs_comm must connect. This is equivalent to the pbs.conf variable PBS_COMM_ROUTERS. The command line overrides the variable. Format: <host>[:<port>][,<host>[:<port>]] 🎀
• -t — the number of threads the pbs_comm daemon uses. This is equivalent to the pbs.conf variable PBS_COMM_THREADS. The command line overrides the variable. Format: Integer 🌈
• --version — prints the PBS version and exits. This option can only be used alone. ⭐

💜 CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS 💜

These cuties are parameters in /etc/pbs.conf. 💖

• PBS_LEAF_ROUTERS — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells an endpoint where to find its communication daemon. You can tell each endpoint which communication daemon it should talk to. Specifying the port is optional. 🦋
  • Format: PBS_LEAF_ROUTERS=<host>[:<port>][,<host>[:>port>]]
• PBS_COMM_ROUTERS — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells a pbs_comm where to find its fellow communication daemons. When you add a communication daemon, you must tell it about the other pbs_comms in the complex. When you inform communication daemons about each other, you only tell one of each pair about the other. Do not tell both about each other. We recommend that an easy way to do this is to tell each new pbs_comm about each existing pbs_comm, and leave it at that. 🫶
  • Format: PBS_COMM_ROUTERS=<host>[:<port>][,<host>[:>port>]]
• PBS_COMM_THREADS — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells pbs_comm how many threads to start. By default, each pbs_comm process starts four threads. You can configure the number of threads that each pbs_comm uses. Usually, you want no more threads than the number of processors on the host. 🔥
  • Maximum allowed value: 100
  • Format: Integer
  • Example: PBS_COMM_THREADS=8
• PBS_COMM_LOG_EVENTS — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells pbs_comm which log mask to use. By default, pbs_comm produces few log messages. You can choose more logging, usually for troubleshooting. 🕵️
  • Format: Integer
  • Default: 511
  • Example: PBS_COMM_LOG_EVENTS=<log level>
• PBS_LEAF_NAME — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells an endpoint what name to use for the network. The value does not include a port, since that is usually set by the daemon. By default, the name of the endpoint's host is the hostname of the machine. You can set the name where an endpoint runs. This is useful when you have multiple networks configured, and you want PBS to use a particular network. TPP internally resolves the name to a set of IP addresses, so you do not affect how pbs_comm works. 🌐
  • Format: String
  • Example: PBS_LEAF_NAME=host1
• PBS_START_COMM — parameter in /etc/pbs.conf. Tells PBS init script whether to start a pbs_comm on this host if one is installed. When set to 1, pbs_comm is started. Just as with the other PBS daemons, you can specify whether each host should start pbs_comm. 🚀
  • Format: Boolean
  • Default: 0
  • Example: PBS_START_COMM=1

🍓 COMMUNICATION DAEMON LOGFILES 🍓

The pbs_comm daemon creates its log files under $PBS_HOME/comm_logs. This directory is automatically created by the PBS installer. 🎀

In a failover configuration, this directory is in the shared PBS_HOME, and is used by the pbs_comm daemons running on both the primary and secondary servers. 💖

⚠️ This directory must never be shared across multiple pbs_comm daemons in any other case. That’s a hard no. 🚫

The log filename format is yyyymmdd (the same as for other PBS daemons). 🗓️

The log record format is the same as used by other pbs daemons, with the addition of the thread number and the daemon name in the log record. The log record format is as follows:

<date and time>;<event code>;<daemon name>(<thread number>);<object type>;<object name>;<message>

Example:

03/25/2014 15:13:39;0d86;host1.example.com;TPP;host1.example.com(Thread
2); Connection from leaf 192.168.184.156:19331, tfd=81 down

🌈 SIGNAL HANDLING 🌈

The pbs_comm daemon handles the following signals: 💅

• HUP — re-reads the value of PBS_COMM_LOG_EVENTS from pbs.conf. 🔁
• TERM — the pbs_comm daemon exits. 👋

Signed, sealed, delivered by Local, dated 6 May 2020, living in pbs_comm(8B). xoxo 💖✨