pssh HOWTO

0.1, 2003-11-13

Revision History
Revision 0.12003-11-13
Initial version.

Table of Contents
1. Installation and Setup
2. Preliminaries
3. Examples
3.1. pssh
3.2. pscp
3.3. pnuke
4. Environment Variables
5. Feedback

1. Installation and Setup

To install the software, become root on your machine and do the following (on RedHat systems):

   # rpm -ivh pssh-0.2.3-1.i386.rpm
   Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
      1:pssh                   ########################################### [100%]

By default, the software installs itself in /usr/localbin and /usr/local/lib. Thus, you'll next want to modify your PATH if needed:

# export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

2. Preliminaries

All four programs will print their usage and give an example if no arguments are given. For example, with pssh:

   # pssh
   Usage: pssh [OPTIONS] -h hosts.txt prog [arg0] ..
   
     -h --hosts   hosts file (each line "host[:port] [user]")
     -l --user    username (OPTIONAL)
     -p --par     max number of parallel threads (OPTIONAL)
     -o --outdir  output directory for stdout files (OPTIONAL)
     -t --timeout timeout in seconds to do ssh to a host (OPTIONAL)
     -v --verbose turn on warning and diagnostic messages (OPTIONAL)
     -O --options SSH options (OPTIONAL)
   
   Example: pssh -h ips.txt -l irb2 -o /tmp/foo uptime

And for pscp:

   # pscp
   Usage: pscp [OPTIONS] -h hosts.txt local remote
   
     -h --hosts     hosts file (each line "host[:port] [login]")
     -r --recursive recusively copy directories (OPTIONAL)
     -l --user      username (OPTIONAL)
     -p --par       max number of parallel threads (OPTIONAL)
     -t --timeout   timeout in seconds to do scp to a host (OPTIONAL)
     -O --options   SSH options (OPTIONAL)
   
   Example: pscp -h hosts.txt -l irb2 foo.txt /home/irb2/foo.txt

Note that before using any of these tools, you will need to start ssh-agent! This can be done as follows (substitute zsh with your particular shell).

   # ssh-agent zsh
   # ssh-add
   Enter passphrase for /x/bnc/.ssh/identity: 

3. Examples


3.2. pscp

Here's an example of using pscp to copy files in parallel to a set of machines.

   # pscp -h ips.txt -l irb2 /etc/hosts /tmp/hosts
   Success on 128.112.152.122:22
   Success on 18.31.0.190:22
   Success on 128.232.103.201:22

Using the -r option will perform a recursive copy for copying entire directories.


4. Environment Variables

All four programs take similar sets of options. All of these options can be set using the following environment variables:

   PSSH_HOSTS
   PSSH_USER
   PSSH_PAR
   PSSH_OUTDIR
   PSSH_VERBOSE
   PSSH_OPTIONS

Here are some example settings:

   # export PSSH_HOSTS="/x/bnc/ips.txt"
   # export PSSH_USER="irb2"
   # export PSSH_PAR="32"
   # export PSSH_OUTDIR="/tmp/bar"
   # export PSSH_VERBOSE="0"
   # export PSSH_OPTIONS="UserKnownHostsFile /tmp/known_hosts"

Using the above settings, the examples can be executed succinctly as:

   # pssh hostname
   Success on 128.112.152.122:22
   Success on 18.31.0.190:22
   Success on 128.232.103.201:22
   
   # ls /tmp/bar 
   128.112.152.122  128.232.103.201  18.31.0.190
   
   # cat /tmp/bar/*
   planetlab-1.cs.princeton.edu
   planetlab1.xeno.cl.cam.ac.uk
   planetlab1.lcs.mit.edu
   
   # pscp /etc/hosts /tmp/hosts
   Success on 128.112.152.122:22
   Success on 18.31.0.190:22
   Success on 128.232.103.201:22
   
   # pnuke java   
   Success on 128.112.152.122:22
   Success on 18.31.0.190:22
   Success on 128.232.103.201:22

5. Feedback

Send me email if you're having problems, find bugs, or have any random comments: Brent Chun (bnc at theether.org). Thus far, I've primarily been testing this software on PlanetLab.