LAM (-)
helpfile - LAM help message file
DESCRIPTION
The
lam-helpfile
provides detailed error messages and suggestions for help on how to
fix common problems. In many places in LAM, when an error occurs,
this help file is consulted to display a detailed message of what the
error was and, when possible, suggestions on how to fix the problem.
It consists of much of the information from the LAM FAQ (particularly
in dealing with getting LAM up and running)
At present, the following LAM tools use this help file (it is expected
that more will use it in future releases. If you have suggestions for
locations where more detailed error messages would be helpful, please
let us know):
1.25i
hboot
hcc
hcp
hf77
lamboot
recon
tkill
wipe
STRUCTURE AND SYNTAX
The help file is multiple blocks of help text separated by single line
delimiters. The delimiter lines are of the format:
-*-programname:topicname-*-
Where
programname
is the general name of the program (or group of programs) that this
help message applies to, and
topicname
is the specific topic that this message applies two.
The special keyword
ALL
can be used for either the
programname
or the
topicname
in some cases; this is usually a "wildcard" value where little
specific information is available.
Within the block of the message, lines that begin with a "#" are
treated as comments; they are not printed out.
Three special escape sequences can be used within the help message:
%N
Where N is a number from 1 to the number of arguments that the help
message is invoked with. The "%N" string is replaced with the value
of the Nth argument from the argument list. The arguments are passed
from the LAM binaries themselves; they cannot be edited. The comments
in the default LAM help file explain how many arguments each message
is invoked with, and what each argument is.
%perror
Shows the result of the Unix perror(3) function.
%terror
Shows the result of the LAM terror() function, which is essentially a
wrapper around the Unix perror(3) function.
LOCATION OF HELP FILE
The exact location of the help file is configurable. This allows
system administrators and/or users to customize the help file for
their particular environment.
When LAM attempts to print an error message from the help file, it
looks for the help file in the following locations (in order):
1.25i
$LAMHELPFILE
$HOME/lam-helpfile
$HOME/lam-6.3-helpfile
$HOME/share/lam/lam-helpfile
$HOME/share/lam/lam-6.3-helpfile
$LAMHELPDIR/lam-helpfile
$LAMHELPDIR/lam-6.3-helpfile
$LAMHOME/share/lam/lam-helpfile
$LAMHOME/share/lam/lam-6.3-helpfile
$TROLLIUSHOME/share/lam/lam-helpfile
$TROLLIUSHOME/share/lam/lam-6.3-helpfile
$prefix/share/lam/lam-helpfile
$prefix/share/lam/lam-6.3-helpfile
Note the two variables $LAMHELPFILE and $LAMHELPDIR; these
variables can be set according to platform, for example, to provide
operating system-specific information, or information specific to
particular groups of machines, etc.
$prefix
is the location to where LAM was installed; it was the option supplied
to ./configure when LAM was built (or
/usr/local/lam-6.3, by default).
EXAMPLES
The following is an example customization of the help for the hboot
and lamboot programs, when the user supplies a host file name that is
not found.
-*-boot:open-hostfile-*-
%1 could not open the hostfile "%2" for the following reason:
%perror
Things to check:
- ensure that the file exists
try "ls -l %2"
- ensure that you have read permissions on the file
try "cat %2"
You may not need to specify a host file at all; the system
administrators have defined the all of Beowulf cluster host names in
the LAM default host name list. If you wish to use all of the Beowulf
nodes, simply execute:
%1 -v
If you have any problems with LAM, please send mail to:
lam-admin@your.domain.com
FILES
SEE ALSO
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