The PVM Menu

The PVM menu is used to configure and execute PVM and related programs. It is pictured in Figure 5.6. The menu entries are:

 

Figure 5.6. The PVM menu

• PVM console -- brings up a PVM console, and starts PVM if it is not already running. If a PVM hostfile has not already been selected (see below), then the user will prompted to create or select a hostfile, or to start PVM without a hostfile. The PVM console will come up in a term window (for example xterm , but the type is determined by user preferences, Section 5.4), and may be left up or closed with the PVM console command quit . It is recommended that the console window be left open in case the PVM application ``hangs'' (which will also cause PADE to hang), in which case the console is required to terminate the application.

• PVM daemon -- starts the PVM daemon without bringing up the console. As with PVM console above, the user will be prompted if a hostfile has not been selected.

• xpvm -- launches the XPVM application, a GUI interface to PVM.

• pvmstat -- runs the CAML Utility pvmstat . This returns information about the status of the virtual machine.

• pvmtidy -- runs the CAML Utility pvmtidy . This removes all spurious pvmd.* files from the nodes of the virtual machine and kills any hopelessly lost PVM daemons, in case PVM was not shut down gracefully.

• Pick Hostfile... -- selects an existing file as the PVM hostfile. It brings up a file browser.

• Edit Hostfile... -- creates or edits a PVM hostfile. It brings up a PADE Edit File window.

• Write Host list to Hostfile... -- creates a PVM hostfile. The file will contain the same list of hosts as in the current PADE data. It brings up a file browser to select the file to write the host list to.

• List Hostfile -- displays the current PVM hostfile.