HP Systems Insight Manager 6.0 Command Line Interface Guide

• Running tool. If there is a command line to execute (the command line is optional for a tool), the job
enters the Running tool state. During this state, the target forks (starts) a process to run the command
and establishes a clean process environment (see Target Execution Environment). It then executes (see
execl(1) ) the POSIX shell with the command line as the argument (see sh-posix(1) ). The
command line is run from the HOME directory (as defined by getpwuid(3C) on the target) of the
execution user specified by the user keyword in the tool definition. If the user does not exist on the
target, / is used. The stdin for the process is set to /dev/null.
If the tool is a launch-only tool, as soon as the shell has successfully executed the command line, the
agent on the target moves to the next state. If not, the target agent waits while the command executes,
and after it exits, it gathers up the stdout, stderr, and exit code of the process to be returned to
the DTF. The results are returned to the DTF and the connection is closed.
• Complete. The job is finished and any available results are sent to the user interface and the log file.
Task termination
Tasks can be terminated if they have not reached the Running tool state. Termination has no effect on target
nodes in the Running tool or Complete state. To terminate a job, run mxexec with -c (and optionally, -k).
Use -j to specify the job_ID of the job to cancel.
A cancelled job performs no further processing on the target node. If a file is being copied at the time of
the cancellation, the copy is stopped and any contents already copied are removed. If a previous file existed
before, it is restored. Files already copied to the target are not returned to the state prior to job execution.
The effect of killing a job is that, in addition to the cancellation steps described above, the shell process
invoked to run the command line associated with the tool is killed. This is done by sending the SIGKILL
signal (see kill(1)) to the process group.
CAUTION: Killing a running process can be a dangerous operation because it might leave the system in
an inconsistent state.
Limits on simultaneous task execution
HP SIM has three separate limits that affect the maximum number of simultaneous job executions.
• The DTF has a limit of ten simultaneous job executions. If ten jobs are already executing and another
is requested (via mxexec or the portal), the new job will pause until one of the currently executing jobs
is finished. If the currently executing jobs take a long time to complete (they are doing lengthy tasks
such as installing a large software package using SD, or creating a recovery image using I/UX), the
new job could pause for a long time. This limit is global to the DTF, and is not a per user limit.
• The DTF has a limit of sixteen simultaneous agent connections. This means that at any point in time, no
more than sixteen agents are executing jobs sent by the DTF. If a job that references more than sixteen
target nodes is started, only the first sixteen will be started immediately. The remaining targets will wait
in the Pending state until one of the running targets finishes. This limit is global to the DTF, and is not
a per job or per user limit. If a job is currently executing on twelve targets and a new job referencing
six targets is requested, only the first four targets will start immediately, and the remaining targets will
wait in the Pending state until earlier targets finish execution.
• The agent has a limit of four simultaneous job executions. If four jobs are executing on a target, and
a new job is started that references that target, when the DTF contacts the agent on that target to run
the new job, it gets an agent busy exception. The DTF will continue contacting any other referenced
targets until the only ones remaining are those that are busy. It then periodically contacts the busy agent
until one of the executing jobs finishes and the agent accepts the new job.
Options
-t toolname
Specify the name of the tool to execute. If the toolname contains embedded spaces or
other characters interpreted by the shell, enclose it in quotation marks.
-A argvalue [argvalue...]
30 Command descriptions