LSF Version 7.3 - Administering Platform LSF

Administering Platform LSF 609
Running Interactive and Remote Tasks
xterm on a PC
Each X application makes a separate network connection to the X display on the
user's desktop. The application generally gets the information about the display
from the DISPLAY environment variable.
X-based systems such as
eXceed start applications by making a remote shell
connection to the UNIX server, setting the DISPLAY environment variable, and
then invoking the X application. Once the application starts, it makes its own
connection to the display and the initial remote shell is no longer needed.
This approach can be extended to allow load sharing of remote applications. The
client software running on the X display host makes a remote shell connection to
any server host in the LSF cluster. Instead of running the X application directly, the
client invokes a script that uses LSF to select the best available host and starts the
application on that host. Because the application then makes a direct connection to
the display, all of the intermediate connections can be closed. The client software
on the display host must select a host in the cluster to start the connection. You can
choose an arbitrary host for this; once LSF selects the best host and starts the X
application there, the initial host is no longer involved. There is no ongoing load on
the initial host.
Setting up an X terminal to start an X session on the least loaded host
If you are using a PC as a desktop machine and are running an X Window server on
your PC, then you can start an X session on the least loaded host.
The following steps assume you are using
Exceed from Hummingbird
Communications. This procedure can be used to load share any X-based
application.
You can customize host selection by changing the resource requirements specified
with
-R "...". For example, a user could have several icons in the xterm program
group: one called
Best, another called Best_Sun, another Best_SGI.
Set up Exceed to
log on the least
loaded host
To set up Exceed to log on to the least loaded host:
1 Click the Xstart icon in the Exceed program group.
2 Choose REXEC (TCP/IP, ...) as start method, program type is X window.
3 Set the host to be any server host in your LSF cluster:
lsrun -R "type==any order[cpu:mem:login]" xterm -sb -ls -display your_PC:0.0
4 Set description to be Best.
5 Click the Install button in the Xstart window.
This installs
Best as an icon in the program group you chose (for example,
xterm).
The user can now log on to the best host by clicking Best in the Xterm program
group.