Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: nasng@comlab.ox.ac.uk (Shrinivas Gorur)
Subject: Re: xpvm1.0 and "hostfile"
Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 1994 09:36:13 GMT
Message-ID: <1994Jun20.093613.5117@nagp19.comlab.ox.ac.uk>


> I don't know why the locations of pvm executables always gives
> me such difficulty but I thought some recent "discoveries" might
> save some others a bit of time.
> 
>   It appears to me (both by experiment and by reading the
>   source code) that xpvm pretty much ignores any host options
>   in the hostfile (".xpvm_hosts").
> 
> Clearly any lines starting with '*' are ignored, and it appears
> that things like dx, ep, etc.. are just ignored and there doesn't seem
> to be any other way to set them.  
> 
> *sigh*

Actually not. There is a simple way around it. 

* Link your hostfile to the .xpvm_hosts
* start pvm with your hostfile
* start xpvm

In my host file I have all the lines beginning with a & sign. So other than
the host the pvm is started on none of the other pvms come up. Only their
defaults are read and memorised by pvm. The XPVM just rides on this and
invokes the other machines by clicking on their buttons.

Neat.

> 
> In general xpvm looks pretty neat.  There are a few minor little pains
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Certainly. I had a play with it. It
seems to be a very good tool. I guess I will be using it regularly for all
my pvm program development.

> (color coding is inconsistent between views, .xpvm_hosts only looks in
> home directory not in local directory first, etc...) but I think
> they'll be easy to fix in the source.
> 
> Craig

