pbs_track

Appendices > Appendix A: Commands overview > pbs_track

pbs_track

Starts a new process and informs pbs_mom to start tracking it.

Synopsis

pbs_track -j <JOBID> [-b] <executable> [args]

Description

The pbs_track command tells a pbs_mom daemon to monitor the lifecycle and resource usage of the process that it launches using exec(). The pbs_mom is told about this new process via the Task Manager API, using tm_adopt(). The process must also be associated with a job that already exists on the pbs_mom.

By default, pbs_track will send its PID to TORQUE via tm_adopt(). It will then perform an exec(), causing <executable> to run with the supplied arguments. pbs_track will not return until the launched process has completed because it becomes the launched process.

This command can be considered related to the pbsdsh command which uses the tm_spawn() API call. The pbsdsh command asks a pbs_mom to launch and track a new process on behalf of a job. When it is not desirable or possible for the pbs_mom to spawn processes for a job, pbs_track can be used to allow an external entity to launch a process and include it as part of a job.

This command improves integration with TORQUE and SGI's MPT MPI implementation.

Options

Option	Description
-j <JOBID>	Job ID the new process should be associated with.
-b	Instead of having pbs_track send its PID to TORQUE, it will fork() first, send the child PID to TORQUE, and then execute from the forked child. This essentially "backgrounds" pbs_track so that it will return after the new process is launched.

Operands

The pbs_track command accepts a path to a program/executable (<executable>) and, optionally, one or more arguments to pass to that program.

Exit status

Because the pbs_track command becomes a new process (if used without -b), its exit status will match that of the new process. If the -b option is used, the exit status will be zero if no errors occurred before launching the new process.

If pbs_track fails, whether due to a bad argument or other error, the exit status will be set to a non-zero value.