The PVM Console

The PVM console is the interface between the parallel virtual machine and the user. You can start and stop processes and display information about the state of the virtual machine, but most important of all you can start and stop PVM on local and remote machines thereby creating - or destroying the virtual machine.
Step 1: Starting PVM
Log into one of the computers you want to use in your virtual machine and type:

pvm

if all the installation and configuration task were successfully completed, pvm will start and answer with the following prompt:

pvm>

Congratulations, you just created a parallel virtual machine which consists of one physical machine. Of course, this is rather useless, so let's extend our system.

Step 2: Adding hosts
To add hosts to your virtual machine, type at the pvm prompt:

add hostname

where hostname is the name of the computer you want to add.
This will start PVM on the specified hosts on upon success you will get a message like:

1 successful
HOST DTID
banana 140000

and you can continue to add additional hosts.

Step 3: Checking your configuration
You can display the configuration of your parallel virtual machine by typing:

conf

at the PVM prompt which will give you information about the hosts configured, their PVM identification number and their architecture.

Step 4: Deleting hosts
Sometimes it is necessary to remove hosts from the virtual machine to test or debug a program. To do this you type:

delete hostname

at the PVM prompt where hostname is the name of the computer you want to delete.

Step 5: Leaving the console
If you are done with setting up your virtual machine and if you don't need any of the othe functions of the console, then you can type:

quit

This only quits the console, PVM is still running.

Step 6: Stopping PVM
To stop PVM after your parallel program has finished, enter the PVM console by typing at the unix prompt:

pvm

and then type at the PVM prompt:

halt

This stops PVM on all the machines you started it and it should kill all the programs which ran under PVM as well. This is the best and easiest way to stop PVM.

Previous: Configuring PVM
Next: The first program - communication is everything
Index: Getting started with PVM