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ParaStation5 Administrator's Guide 35
parastation.conf
parastation.conf — the ParaStation configuration file
Description
Upon execution, the ParaStation daemon psid(8) reads its configuration information from a configuration
file which, by default, is /etc/parastation.conf. There are various parameters that can be modified
persistently within this configuration file.
The main syntax of the configuration file is one parameter per line. Due to ease of use there are some
parameters, e.g. Nodes, that are implemented in an environment mode. This mode enables the setting of
multiple parameters by a single command. Environment mode parameters may comprise more than one
line.
Line continuation is possible. If the last character within a line before the newline character is a "\", the
newline character will be ignored and the next line is appended to the current line.
Comments are starting with a "#". All remaining characters on the line will be ignored. Keep in mind that
line continuation also works within comments, i.e. if the last character of the line is a "\", the next line will
be ignored, too.
The parser used to analyze parastation.conf is not case sensitive. This means, that all keywords
within the configuration file may be written in any combination of upper- and lowercase characters. Within
this document a mixed upper-/lowercase notation is used to provide more readable keywords. The same
notation is used in the configuration file template parastation.conf.tmpl contained in the distributed
ParaStation system. The template file can be found in /opt/parastation/config.
Parameters
The different parameters are discussed in the order they should appear within the configuration file.
Dependencies between parameters - resulting in a defined order of parameters - are marked explicitely.
Some parameters may be modified using different keywords, e.g. both InstallDir and InstallationDir modify
the directory where the ParaStation daemon psid(8) expects the ParaStation system installed. In case of
different keywords modifying the same resource, all keywords are mentioned in front of the parameter's
discussion.
Very few parameters have to be declared in any case in order to enable ParaStation to run on a cluster.
These parameters are NrOfNodes, HWType and Nodes.
If parameters are declared more than once, the latest declaration is the one to use. Do not make use of
this behavior as a feature since it may create great pitfalls.
InstallDir inst-dir , InstallationDir inst-dir
Tell the ParaStation daemon to find all the ParaStation related files in inst-dir. The default is /opt/
parastation.
Hardware name
Tell the ParaStation daemon how to handle a distinct hardware. Usually it is not necessary to edit these
entries, since the template version of the configuration file contains up to date entries of all supported
hardware types. Furthermore a deeper insight into the low-level functionality of ParaStation is needed
in order to create such an entry.
Nevertheless a brief overview on the structure of the Hardware entries is given here.