Parallel shell with pdsh

Shell Games

© Lead Image © Kasia biel, 123RF.com

© Lead Image © Kasia biel, 123RF.com

Article from Issue 166/2014
Author(s):

The most fundamental tool needed to administer a cluster is a parallel shell, which allows you to run the same command on a series of nodes. In this article, we look at pdsh.

A parallel shell allows you to run the same command on designated nodes in the cluster, so you don't have to log in to each node to run the command. This tool can be useful in many ways, but I like to use it when performing administrative tasks, such as:

  • Checking the versions of particular software packages on each node
  • Checking the OS version on all nodes
  • Checking the kernel version on all nodes
  • Searching the system logs on each node (if you don't store them centrally)
  • Examining the CPU usage on each node
  • Examining local I/O (if the nodes are doing local I/O)
  • Checking whether any nodes are swapping
  • Spot-monitoring the compute nodes

The complete list of possible tasks is extensive, but anything you want to do on a single node can be done on a large number of nodes using a parallel shell tool.

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