flux-shell(1)

SYNOPSIS

flux-shell [OPTIONS] JOBID

DESCRIPTION

flux shell, the Flux job shell, is the component of Flux which manages the startup and execution of user jobs. flux shell runs as the job user, reads the jobspec and assigned resource set R for the job from the KVS, and using this data determines what local job tasks to execute. While job tasks are running, the job shell acts as the interface between the Flux instance and the job by handling standard I/O, signals, and finally collecting the exit status of tasks as they complete.

The design of the Flux job shell allows customization through a set of builtin and runtime loadable shell plugins. These plugins are used to handle standard I/O redirection, PMI, CPU and GPU affinity, debugger support and more. Details of the flux shell plugin capabilities and design can be found in the PLUGINS section below.

flux shell also supports configuration via a Lua-based configuration file, called the shell initrc, from which shell plugins may be loaded or shell options and data examined or set. The flux shell initrc may even extend the shell itself via simple shell plugins developed directly in Lua. See the SHELL INITRC section below for details of the initrc format and features.

OPTIONS

-h, --help: Summarize available options.

--reconnect: Attempt to reconnect if broker connection is lost.

OPERATION

When a job has been granted resources by a Flux instance, a flux shell process is invoked on each broker rank involved in the job. The job shell runs as the job user, and will always have FLUX_KVS_NAMESPACE set such that the root of the job shell's KVS accesses will be the guest namespace for the job.

Each flux shell connects to the local broker, fetches the jobspec and resource set R for the job from the job-info module, and uses this information to plan which tasks to locally execute.

Once the job shell has successfully gathered job information, the flux shell then goes through the following general steps to manage execution of the job:

register service endpoint specific to the job and userid, typically <userid>-shell-<jobid>

load the system default initrc.lua ($sysconfdir/flux/shell/initrc.lua), unless overridden by configuration (See SHELL OPTIONS and SHELL INITRC sections below)

call shell.init plugin callbacks

change working directory to the cwd of the job

enter a barrier to ensure shell initialization is complete on all shells

emit shell.init event to exec.eventlog

call shell.post-init plugin callbacks

create all local tasks. For each task, the following procedure is used

call task.init plugin callback

launch task, call task.exec plugin callback just before execve(2)

call task.fork plugin callback

once all tasks have started, call shell.start plugin callback

enter shell "start" barrier

emit shell.start event, after which all tasks are known running

for each exiting task:

call task.exit plugin callback

collect exit status

call shell.exit plugin callback when all tasks have exited.

exit with max task exit code

PLUGINS

The job shell supports external and builtin plugins which implement most of the advanced job shell features. Job shell plugins are loaded into a plugin stack by name, where the last loaded name wins. Therefore, to override a builtin plugin, an alternate plugin which registers the same name may be loaded at runtime.

Note

Job shell plugins should be written with the assumption their access to Flux services may be restricted as a guest.

C plugins are defined using the Flux standard plugin format. A shell C plugin should therefore export a single symbol flux_plugin_init(), in which calls to flux_plugin_add_handler(3) should be used to register functions which will be invoked at defined points during shell execution. These callbacks are defined by "topic strings" to which plugins can "subscribe" by calling flux_plugin_add_handler(3) and/or flux_plugin_register(3) with topic glob(7) strings.

Note

flux_plugin_init(3) is not called for builtin shell plugins. If a dynamically loaded plugin wishes to set shell options to influence a shell builtin plugin (e.g. to disable its operation), it should therefore do so in flux_plugin_init() in order to guarantee that the shell option is set before the builtin attempts to read them.

Simple plugins may also be developed directly in the shell initrc.lua file itself (see SHELL INITRC section, plugin.register() below)

By default, flux shell supports the following plugin callback topics:

taskmap.SCHEME: Called when a taskmap scheme SCHEME is requested via the taskmap shell option or corresponding flux submit --taskmap option. Plugins that want to offer a different taskmap scheme than the defaults of block, cyclic, hostfile, and manual can register a taskmap.* plugin callback and then users can request this mapping with the appropriate flux submit --taskmap=name` option. The default block taskmap is passed to the plugin as "taskmap" in the plugin input arguments, and the plugin should return the new taskmap as a string in the output args. This callback is called before shell.init.
shell.connect: Called just after the shell connects to the local Flux broker. (Only available to builtin shell plugins.)
shell.init: Called after the shell has finished fetching and parsing the jobspec and R from the KVS, but before any tasks are started.
shell.post-init: Called after the shell initialization barrier has completed, but before starting any tasks.
task.init: Called for each task after the task info has been constructed but before the task is executed.
task.exec: Called for each task after the task has been forked just before execve(2) is called. This callback is made from within the task process.
task.fork: Called for each task after the task if forked from the parent process (flux shell process)
task.exit: Called for each task after it exits and wait_status is available.
shell.start: Called after all local tasks have been started. The shell "start" barrier is called just after this callback returns.
shell.log: Called by the shell logging facility when a shell component posts a log message.
shell.log-setlevel: Called by the shell logging facility when a request to set the shell loglevel is made.

Note however, that plugins may also call into the plugin stack to create new callbacks at runtime, so more topics than those listed above may be available in a given shell instance.

SHELL OPTIONS

On startup, flux shell will examine the jobspec for any shell specific options under the attributes.system.shell.options key. These options may be set by the flux submit -o, --setopt=OPT option, or explicitly added to the jobspec by other means.

Job shell options may be switches to enable or disable a shell feature or plugin, or they may take an argument. Because jobspec is a JSON document, job shell options in jobspec may take arguments that are themselves JSON objects. This allows maximum flexibility in runtime configuration of optional job shell behavior. In the list below, if an option doesn't include a =, then it is a simple boolean option or switch and may be specified simply with flux submit -o OPTION.

Job shell plugins may also support configuration via shell options in the jobspec. For specific information about runtime-loaded plugins, see the documentation for the specific plugin in question.

Shell options supported by flux shell itself and its built-in plugins include:

verbose[=INT]: Set the shell verbosity to INT. A larger value indicates increased verbosity, though setting this value larger than 2 currently has no effect.

nosetpgrp: Disable the use of setpgrp(2) to launch each job task in its own process group. This will cause signals to be delivered only to direct children of the shell.

initrc=FILE: Load flux shell initrc.lua file from FILE instead of the default initrc path. For details of the job shell initrc.lua file format, see the SHELL INITRC section below.

userrc=FILE: Load another initrc.lua file after the system one. For details of the job shell initrc.lua file format, see the SHELL INITRC section below.

pty: Allocate a pty to all task ranks for non-interactive use. Output from all ranks will be captured to the same location as stdout. This is the same as setting pty.ranks=all and pty.capture. (see below).

pty.ranks=OPT: Set the task ranks for which to allocate a pty. OPT may be either an RFC 22 IDset of target ranks, an integer rank, or the string "all" to indicate all ranks.

pty.capture: Enable capture of pty output to the same location as stdout. This is the default unless pty.interactive is set.

pty.interactive

Enable a a pty on rank 0 that is set up for interactive attach by a front-end program (i.e. flux job attach). With no other pty options, only rank 0 will be assigned a pty and output will not be captured. These defaults can be changed by setting other pty options after pty.interactive, e.g.

$  flux run -o pty.interactive -o pty.capture ...

would allocate an interactive pty on rank 0 and also capture the pty session to the KVS (so it can be displayed after the job exits with flux job attach).

cpu-affinity=OPT

Adjust the operation of the builtin shell affinity plugin. If the option is unspecified, on is assumed. OPT may be set to:

on: Bind each task to the full set of cores allocated to the job.
off: Disable the affinity plugin. This may be useful if using another plugin such as mpibind to manage CPU affinity.
per-task: Bind each task to an evenly populated subset of the cores allocated to the job. Tasks share cores only if there are more tasks than cores.
map:LIST: Bind each task to LIST, a semicolon-delimited list of cores. Each entry in the list can be in one of the hwloc(7) list, bitmask, or taskset formats. See hwlocality_bitmap(3), especially the hwloc_bitmap_list_snprintf(), hwloc_bitmap_snprintf() and hwloc_bitmap_taskset_snprintf() functions.

gpu-affinity=OPT

Adjust operation of the builtin shell gpubind plugin. This plugin sets CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES to the GPU IDs allocated to the job. If the option is unspecified, on is assumed. OPT may be set to:

on: Constrain each task to the full set of GPUs allocated to the job.
off: Disable the gpu-affinity plugin.
per-task: Constrain each task to an evenly populated subset of the GPUs allocated to the job. Tasks share GPUs only if there are more tasks than GPUs.
map:LIST: Constrain each task to LIST, a semicolon-delimited list of GPUs. See cpu-affinity above for a description of LIST format.

stop-tasks-in-exec: Stops tasks in exec() using PTRACE_TRACEME. Used for debugging parallel jobs. Users should not need to set this option directly.

output.{stdout,stderr}.type=TYPE: Set job output to for stderr or stdout to TYPE. TYPE may be one of term, kvs or file (Default: kvs). If only output.stdout.type is set, then this option applies to both stdout and stderr. If set to file, then output.<stream>.path must also be set for the stream. Most users will not need to set this option directly, as it will be set automatically by options of higher level commands such as flux-submit(1).

output.limit=SIZE: Truncate KVS output after SIZE bytes have been written. SIZE may be a floating point value with optional SI units k, K, M, G. The maximum value is 1G. The default KVS output limit is 10M for jobs in a multi-user instance or 1G for single-user instance jobs. This value is ignored if output is directed to a file.

output.{stdout,stderr}.path=PATH: Set job stderr/out file output to PATH.

output.mode=truncate|append: Set the mode in which output files are opened to either truncate or append. The default is to truncate.

input.stdin.type=TYPE: Set job input for stdin to TYPE. TYPE may be either service or file. Users should not need to set this option directly as it will be handled by options of higher level commands like flux-submit(1).

exit-timeout=VALUE: A fatal exception is raised on the job 30s after the first task exits. The timeout period may be altered by providing a different value in Flux Standard Duration form. A value of none disables generation of the exception.

exit-on-error: If the first task to exit was signaled or exited with a nonzero status, raise a fatal exception on the job immediately.

rlimit: A dictionary of soft process resource limits to apply to the job before starting tasks. Resource limits are set to integer values by lowercase name without the RLIMIT_ prefix, e.g. core or nofile. Users should not need to set this shell option as it is handled by commands like flux-submit(1).

taskmap: Request an alternate job task mapping. This option is an object consisting of required key scheme and optional key value. The shell will attempt to call a taskmap.scheme plugin callback in the shell to invoke the alternate requested mapping. If value is set, this will also be passed to the invoked plugin. Normally, this option will be set by the flux-submit(1) and related commands --taskmap option.

pmi=LIST

Specify a comma-separated list of PMI implementations to enable. If the option is unspecified, simple is assumed. To disable, set LIST to off. Available implementations include

simple: The simple PMI-1 wire protocol. This implementation works by passing an open file descriptor to clients via the PMI_FD environment variable. It must be enabled when Flux's libpmi.so or libpmi2.so libraries are used, and is preferred by flux-broker(1) when Flux launches Flux, e.g. by means of flux-batch(1) or flux-alloc(1).
pmi1, pmi2: Aliases for simple.
cray-pals: Provided via external plugin from the flux-coral2 project.
pmix: Provided via external plugin from the flux-pmix project.

pmi-simple.nomap: Skip pre-populating the flux.taskmap and PMI_process_mapping keys in the simple implementation.

pmi-simple.kvs=native: Use the native Flux KVS instead of the PMI plugin's built-in key exchange algorithm in the simple implementation.

pmi-simple.exchange.k=N: Configure the PMI plugin's built-in key exchange algorithm to use a virtual tree fanout of N for key gather/broadcast in the simple implementation. The default is 2.

stage-in: Copy files to the directory referenced by FLUX_JOB_TMPDIR that were previously archived with flux-archive(1).

stage-in.names=LIST: Select archives to extract by specifying a comma-separated list of names If no names are specified, main is assumed.

stage-in.pattern=PATTERN: Further filter the selected files to copy using a glob(7) pattern.

stage-in.destination=[SCOPE:]PATH: Copy files to the specified destination instead of the directory referenced by FLUX_JOB_TMPDIR. The argument is a directory with optional scope prefix. A scope of local denotes a local file system (the default), and a scope of global denotes a global file system. The copy takes place on all the job's nodes if the scope is local, versus only the first node of the job if the scope is global.

signal=OPTION: Deliver signal SIGUSR1 to the job 60s before job expiration. To customize the signal number or amount of time before expiration to deliver the signal, the signal option may be an object with one or both of the keys signum or timeleft. (See below)

signal.signum=NUMBER: Send signal NUMBER to the job signal.timeleft seconds before the time limit.

signal.timeleft=TIME: Send signal signal.signum TIME seconds before job expiration.

hwloc.xmlfile: Write the job shell's copy of hwloc XML to a file and set HWLOC_XMLFILE. Note that this option will also unset HWLOC_COMPONENTS since presence of this environment variable may cause hwloc to ignore HWLOC_XMLFILE.

hwloc.restrict: With hwloc.xmlfile, restrict the exported topology XML to only the resources assigned to the current job. By default the XML is not restricted.

Warning

The directory referenced by FLUX_JOB_TMPDIR is cleaned up when the job ends, is guaranteed to be unique, and is generally on fast local storage such as a tmpfs. If a destination is explicitly specified, use the global: prefix where appropriate to avoid overwhelming a shared file system, and be sure to clean up.

SHELL INITRC

At initialization, flux shell reads a Lua initrc file which can be used to customize the shell operation. The initrc is loaded by default from $sysconfdir/flux/shell/initrc.lua (or /etc/flux/shell/initrc.lua for a "standard" install), but a different path may be specified when launching a job via the initrc shell option. Alternatively, the userrc shell option can specify an initrc file to load after the system one.

A job shell initrc file may be used to adjust the shell plugin searchpath, load specific plugins, read and set shell options, and even extend the shell itself using Lua.

Since the job shell initrc is a Lua file, any Lua syntax is supported. Job shell specific functions and tables are described below:

plugin.searchpath

The current plugin searchpath. This value can be queried, set, or appended. E.g. to add a new path to the plugin search path: plugin.searchpath = plugin.searchpath .. ':' .. path

plugin.load({file=glob, [conf=table]})

Explicitly load one more shell plugins. This function takes a table argument with file and conf arguments. The file argument is a glob of one or more plugins to load. If an absolute path is not specified, then the glob will be relative to plugin.searchpath. E.g. plugin.load { file = "*.so" } will load all .so plugins in the current search path. The conf option allows static configuration values to be passed to plugin initialization functions when supported.

For example a plugin test.so may be explicitly loaded with configuration via:

plugin.load { file = "test.so", conf = { value = "foo" } }

plugin.register({name=plugin_name, handlers=handlers_table)

Register a Lua plugin. Requires a table argument with the plugin name and a set of handlers. handlers_table is an array of tables, each of which must define topic, a topic glob of shell plugin callbacks to which to subscribe, and fn a handler function to call for each match

For example, the following plugin would log the topic string for every possible plugin callback (except for callbacks which are made before the shell logging facility is initialized)

plugin.register {
  name = "test",
  handlers = {
     { topic = "*",
       fn = function (topic) shell.log ("topic="..topic) end
     },
  }
}

source(glob)

Source another Lua file or files. Supports specification of a glob, e.g. source ("*.lua"). This function fails if a non-glob argument specifies a file that does not exist, or there is an error loading or compiling the Lua chunk.

source_if_exists(glob)

Same as source(), but do not throw an error if the target file does not exist.

shell.rcpath

The directory in which the current initrc file resides.

shell.getenv([name])

Return the job environment (not the job shell environment). This is the environment which will be inherited by the job tasks. If called with no arguments, then the entire environment is copied to a table and returned. Otherwise, acts as flux_shell_getenv(3) and returns the value for the environment variable name, or nil if not set.

shell.setenv(var, val, [overwrite])

Set environment variable var to value val in the job environment. If overwrite is set and is 0 or false then do not overwrite existing environment variable value.

shell.unsetenv(var)

Unset environment variable var in job environment.

shell.options

A virtual index into currently set shell options, including those set in jobspec. This table can be used to check jobspec options, and even to force certain options to a value by default e.g. shell.options['cpu-affinity'] = "per-task", would force cpu-affinity shell option to per-task.

shell.options.verbose

Current flux shell verbosity. This value may be changed at runtime, e.g. shell.options.verbose = 2 to set maximum verbosity.

shell.info

Returns a Lua table of shell information obtained via flux_shell_get_info(3). This table includes

jobid: The current jobid.
rank: The rank of the current shell within the job.
size: The number of flux shell processes participating in this job.
ntasks: The total number of tasks in this job.
service: The service string advertised by the shell.
options.verbose: True if the shell is running in verbose mode.
jobspec: The jobspec of the current job
R: The resource set R of the current job

shell.rankinfo

Returns a Lua table of rank-specific shell information for the current shell rank. See shell.get_rankinfo() for a description of the members of this table.

shell.get_rankinfo(shell_rank)

Query rank-specific shell info as in the function call flux_shell_get_rank_info(3). If shell_rank is not provided then the current rank is used. Returns a table of rank-specific information including:

broker_rank: The broker rank on which shell_rank is running.
ntasks: The number of local tasks assigned to shell_rank.
resources: A table of resources by name (e.g. "core", "gpu") assigned to shell_rank, e.g. { core = "0-1", gpu = "0" }.

shell.log(msg), shell.debug(msg), shell.log_error(msg)

Log messages to the shell log facility at INFO, DEBUG, and ERROR levels respectively.

shell.die(msg)

Log a FATAL message to the shell log facility. This generates a job exception and will terminate the job.

The following task-specific initrc data and functions are available only in one of the task.* plugin callbacks. An error will be generated if they are accessed from any other context.

task.info

Returns a Lua table of task specific information for the "current" task (see flux_shell_task_get_info(3)). Included members of the task.info table include:

localid: The local task rank (i.e. within this shell)
rank: The global task rank (i.e. within this job)
state: The current task state name
pid: The process id of the current task (if task has been started)
wait_status: (Only in task.exit) The status returned by waitpid(2) for this task.
exitcode: (Only in task.exit) The exit code if WIFEXTED() is true.
signaled: (Only in task.exit) If task was signaled, this member will be non-zero integer signal number that caused the task to exit.

task.getenv(var)

Get the value of environment variable var if set in the current task's environment. This function reads the environment from the underlying flux_cmd_t for a shell task, and thus only makes sense before a task is executed, e.g. in task.init and task.exec callbacks.

task.unsetenv(var)

Unset environment variable var for the current task. As with task.getenv() this function is only valid before a task has been started.

task.setenv(var, value, [overwrite])

Set environment variable var to val for the current task. If overwrite is set to 0 or false, then do not overwrite any current value. As with task.getenv() and task.unsetenv(), this function only has an effect before the task is started.

RESOURCES

Flux: http://flux-framework.org

Flux RFC: https://flux-framework.readthedocs.io/projects/flux-rfc

Issue Tracker: https://github.com/flux-framework/flux-core/issues