[Beowulf] looking for good distributed shell program

[Prentice Bisbal]

Beowulfers,

I decided to go with this gsh:

http://outflux.net/unix/software/gsh/

I looked at pdsh, and it looks powerful, but more complicated, too. This
gsh does everything I need, and has a simple config file syntax as well
as exactly the command sytnax I was looking for. I already have it
completely configured for my environment. And due to the simpler syntax,
it will be easier to get my coworkers to use it, too. ;)

Thanks for all your replies. Those of you who voted for pdsh, don't
worry, you're votes weren't wasted I still plan to tinker with pdsh.

--
Prentice


Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> Beowulfers,
> 
> I'm looking for something that isn't exactly cluster-related, but this
> is something that most cluster admins would be familiar with. I'm
> looking for a good distributed shell, something similar to tentakel or
> gsh. I figure all of you probably have recommendations/opinions on the
> best ones.
> 
> I'm familiar with tentakel, but I find it lacking in a few areas, and
> it's recently been abandoned by it's developer. The author of tentakel
> recommends gsh, but gsh doesn't allow to create pre-defined groups of
> hosts in a config file.
> 
> Here's my wish list:
> 
> 1. Be able to maintain a central config file with different group
> definitiosn with in it.
> 
> 2. Run the commands in parallel and organize the output
> 
> 3. Be able specify the user the command runs as on the command-line, so
>  I don't have to become root just to run a single command as root.
> 
> 4. Be able to subtract systems from a group or add additional ones on
> the commandline. For example, if I have group "cluster", but node05 is
> down, so I want to omit it and add desktop1 instead, I could do
> something like.
> 
> <command> -g cluster-node05+desktop1
> 
> I used a program with these features about 10 years ago. I think it was
> gsh or dsh, but the gsh and dsh I've found today, are different than
> what I used 10 years ago.
> 
> any recommendations?
> 
> 

-- 
Prentice Bisbal
Linux Software Support Specialist/System Administrator
School of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, NJ