17.3 Installing PBS

PBS is able to support a wide range of configurations. It may be installed and used to control jobs on a single system or to load balance jobs on a number of systems. It may be used to allocate nodes of a cluster or parallel system to both serial and parallel jobs. It can also deal with a mix of these situations. However, given the topic of this book, we focus on the recommended configuration for clusters. The PBS Administrator Guide explains other configurations.

When PBS is installed on a cluster, a MOM daemon must be on each execution host, and the Server and Scheduler should be installed on one of the systems or on a front-end system.

For Linux clusters, PBS is packaged in the popular RPM format (Red Hat's Package Manager). (See the PBS Administrator Guide for installation instructions on other systems.) PBS RPM packages are provided as a single tar file containing

the PBS Quick Start Guide in both Postscript and PDF form (PBS Pro only),
the PBS Administrator Guide in both Postscript and PDF form,
the PBS User Guide in both Postscript and PDF form (PBS Pro only),
multiple RPM packages for different components of PBS (see below),
a full set of Unix-style manual pages, and
supporting text files: software license, README, release notes, and the like.

When the PBS tar file is extracted, a subtree of directories is created in which all these files are created. The name of the top-level directory of this subtree will reflect the release number and patch level of the version of PBS being installed. For example, the directory for PBS Pro 5.3 will be named 'PBSPro_5_3_0'.

To install PBS Pro, change to the newly created directory, and run the installation program:

         cd PBSPro_5_3_0         ./INSTALL

The installation program will prompt you for the names of directories for the different parts of PBS and the type of installation. A "full" installation will install all parts of PBS on the computer (including the PBS daemons/services); the "server-only" is intended for the control node of the cluster; the "execution host only" option is intended for compute-nodes of the cluster. Next, you will be prompted for your software license key(s). (See the "Acquiring PBS" section above if you do not already have your software license key.)

For OpenPBS, there are multiple RPMs corresponding to the different installation possibilities: full installation, execution host only, or client commands only. Select the correct RPM for your installation; then install it manually:

         cd pbspro_v5.3         rpm -i RPMNAME...

Note that in OpenPBS, the RPMs will install into predetermined locations under '/usr/pbs' and '/usr/spool/PBS'.