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NAME

       checkpoint  -  Sun  Grid Engine checkpointing environment configuration
       file format

DESCRIPTION

       Checkpointing is a facility to save the complete status of an executing
       program  or  job  and  to  restore  and  restart  from  this  so called
       checkpoint at a later point of time if the original program or job  was
       halted, e.g.  through a system crash.

       Sun  Grid  Engine provides various levels of checkpointing support (see
       sge_ckpt(1)).  The checkpointing environment described here is a  means
       to  configure  the different types of checkpointing in use for your Sun
       Grid Engine cluster or parts thereof. For that purpose you  can  define
       the  operations  which  have  to be executed in initiating a checkpoint
       generation, a migration of a checkpoint to another host or a restart of
       a  checkpointed  application  as  well  as the list of queues which are
       eligible for a checkpointing method.

       Supporting different operating systems may easily force Sun Grid Engine
       to introduce operating system dependencies for the configuration of the
       checkpointing configuration file and updates of the supported operating
       system versions may lead to frequently changing implementation details.
       Please refer to the <sge_root>/ckpt directory for more information.

       Please use the -ackpt, -dckpt, -mckpt or -sckpt options to the qconf(1)
       command  to manipulate checkpointing environments from the command-line
       or  use  the  corresponding  qmon(1)  dialogue  for   X-Windows   based
       interactive configuration.

       Note,  Sun Grid Engine allows backslashes (\) be used to escape newline
       (\newline) characters. The backslash and the newline are replaced  with
       a space (" ") character before any interpretation.

FORMAT

       The format of a checkpoint file is defined as follows:

   ckpt_name
       The  name  of the checkpointing environment as defined for ckpt_name in
       sge_types(1).  To be used in  the  qsub(1)  -ckpt  switch  or  for  the
       qconf(1) options mentioned above.

   interface
       The  type  of  checkpointing to be used. Currently, the following types
       are valid:

       hibernator
              The Hibernator kernel level checkpointing is interfaced.

       cpr    The SGI kernel level checkpointing is used.

       cray-ckpt
              The Cray kernel level checkpointing is assumed.

       transparent
              Sun Grid Engine assumes that the jobs submitted  with  reference
              to this checkpointing interface use a checkpointing library such
              as provided by the public domain package Condor.

       userdefined
              Sun Grid Engine assumes that the jobs submitted  with  reference
              to   this   checkpointing   interface   perform   their  private
              checkpointing method.

       application-level
              Uses  all  of  the  interface   commands   configured   in   the
              checkpointing object like in the case of one of the kernel level
              checkpointing interfaces (cpr, cray-ckpt, etc.) except  for  the
              restart_command  (see  below),  which is not used (even if it is
              configured) but the job script is invoked in case of  a  restart
              instead.

   ckpt_command
       A command-line type command string to be executed by Sun Grid Engine in
       order to initiate a checkpoint.

   migr_command
       A command-line type command string to be executed by  Sun  Grid  Engine
       during a migration of a checkpointing job from one host to another.

   restart_command
       A  command-line  type  command string to be executed by Sun Grid Engine
       when restarting a previously checkpointed application.

   clean_command
       A command-line type command string to be executed by Sun Grid Engine in
       order to cleanup after a checkpointed application has finished.

   ckpt_dir
       A file system location to which checkpoints of potentially considerable
       size should be stored.

   ckpt_signal
       A Unix signal to be sent to a job by Sun  Grid  Engine  to  initiate  a
       checkpoint  generation.  The  value  for  this  field  can  either be a
       symbolic name from the list produced by the -l option  of  the  kill(1)
       command  or  an  integer  number  which  must  be a valid signal on the
       systems used for checkpointing.

   when
       The points of time when  checkpoints  are  expected  to  be  generated.
       Valid values for this parameter are composed by the letters s, m, x and
       r and any combinations thereof  without  any  separating  character  in
       between.  The same letters are allowed for the -c option of the qsub(1)
       command which will overwrite the definitions in the used  checkpointing
       environment.  The meaning of the letters is defined as follows:

       s      A  job  is checkpointed, aborted and if possible migrated if the
              corresponding sge_execd(8) is shut down on the job's machine.

       m      Checkpoints are generated periodically at  the  min_cpu_interval
              interval defined by the queue (see queue_conf(5)) in which a job
              executes.

       x      A job is checkpointed, aborted and if possible migrated as  soon
              as the job gets suspended (manually as well as automatically).

       r      A  job  will  be rescheduled (not checkpointed) when the host on
              which the job currently runs went into  unknown  state  and  the
              time  interval  reschedule_unknown  (see sge_conf(5)) defined in
              the global/local cluster configuration will be exceeded.

RESTRICTIONS

       Note, that the functionality of any checkpointing, migration or restart
       procedures provided by default with the Sun Grid Engine distribution as
       well as the way how they are invoked in the ckpt_command,  migr_command
       or restart_command parameters of any default checkpointing environments
       should not be changed or otherwise the functionality remains  the  full
       responsibility  of  the  administrator  configuring  the  checkpointing
       environment.  Sun Grid Engine will just  invoke  these  procedures  and
       evaluate  their  exit  status.  If  the procedures do not perform their
       tasks  properly  or  are  not  invoked  in  a   proper   fashion,   the
       checkpointing mechanism may behave unexpectedly, Sun Grid Engine has no
       means to detect this.

SEE ALSO

       sge_intro(1), sge_ckpt(1), sge__types(1), qconf(1),  qmod(1),  qsub(1),
       sge_execd(8).

COPYRIGHT

       See sge_intro(1) for a full statement of rights and permissions.