HP Systems Insight Manager 7.1 Command Line Interface Guide

Tool execution states
For every target node, a job goes through the following states that track the progress of the job
on each node:
• Pending. The job has not started on this node. This state is used when there are a large number
of target nodes and the CMS DTF is only able to run a job in parallel on a smaller number of
nodes.
• Copying files. Any files that need to be copied are transmitted to the target, and the target
writes the files and sets their ownership and permissions. The maximum number of files that
can be copied is 16.
• 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
38 Command descriptions