NOTE: The interfaces of flux-core are being actively developed and are not yet stable. The github issue tracker is the primary way to communicate with the developers.
See also the flux-framework.org Online Documentation.
flux-core implements the communication layer and lowest level services and interfaces for the Flux resource manager framework. It consists of a distributed message broker, plug-in comms modules that implement various distributed services, and an API and set of utilities to utilize these services.
flux-core is intended to be the first building block used in the construction of a site-composed Flux resource manager. Other building blocks are also in development under the flux-framework github organization, including a fully functional workload scheduler.
Framework projects use the C4 development model pioneered in the ZeroMQ project and forked as Flux RFC 1. Flux licensing and collaboration plans are described in Flux RFC 2. Protocols and API's used in Flux will be documented as Flux RFC's.
flux-core requires the following packages to build:
| redhat | ubuntu | version | note |
|---|---|---|---|
| autoconf | autoconf | ||
| automake | automake | ||
| libtool | libtool | ||
| libsodium-devel | libsodium-dev | >= 1.0.14 | |
| zeromq4-devel | libzmq3-dev | >= 4.0.4 | |
| czmq-devel | libczmq-dev | >= 3.0.1 | |
| jansson-devel | libjansson-dev | >= 2.6 | |
| lz4-devel | liblz4-dev | ||
| hwloc-devel | libhwloc-dev | >= v1.11.1, < 2.0 | |
| sqlite-devel | libsqlite3-dev | >= 3.0.0 | |
| lua | lua5.1 | >= 5.1, < 5.3 | |
| lua-devel | liblua5.1-dev | >= 5.1, < 5.3 | |
| lua-posix | lua-posix | 1 | |
| python-devel | python-dev | >= 2.7 | |
| python-cffi | python-cffi | >= 1.1 | |
| python-six | python-six | >= 1.9 | |
| python-yaml | python-yaml | >= 3.10.0 | |
| python-jsonschema | python-jsonschema | >= 2.3.0 | |
| asciidoc | asciidoc | 2 | |
| asciidoctor | asciidoctor | >= 1.5.7 | 2 |
| aspell | aspell | 3 | |
| valgrind | valgrind | 3 | |
| mpich | mpich | 3 | |
| jq | jq | 3 |
Note 1 - Due to a packaging issue, Ubuntu lua-posix may need the following symlink (true for version 33.4.0-2):
$ sudo ln -s posix_c.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lua/5.1/posix.so
Note 2 - only needed if optional man pages are to be created. Only one of asciidoc or asciidoctor is needed. Asciidoc is used if both are installed.
Note 3 - optional, for enabling additional tests.
./autogen.sh # skip if building from a release tarball
./configure
make
make check
A Flux instance is composed of a set of flux-broker processes
that boostrap via PMI (e.g. under another resource manager), or locally
via the flux start command.
No administrator privilege is required to start a Flux instance as described below.
To start a Flux instance (size = 8) on the local node for testing:
src/cmd/flux start --size 8
A shell is spawned that has its environment set up so that Flux commands can find the message broker socket. When the shell exits, the session exits.
To start a Flux instance (size = 64) on a cluster using SLURM, first ensure that MUNGE is set up on your cluster, then:
srun --pty --mpi=none -N64 src/cmd/flux start
The srun --pty option is used to connect to the rank 0 shell. When you exit this shell, the session terminates.
Within a session, the path to the flux command associated with the
session broker will be prepended to PATH, so use of a relative or
absolute path is no longer necessary.
To see a list of commonly used commands run flux with no arguments,
flux help, or flux --help
$ flux help
Usage: flux [OPTIONS] COMMAND ARGS
-h, --help Display this message.
-v, --verbose Be verbose about environment and command search
Common commands from flux-core:
broker Invoke Flux comms message broker daemon
content Access instance content storage
cron Schedule tasks on timers and events
dmesg manipulate broker log ring buffer
env Print or run inside a Flux environment
event Send and receive Flux events
exec Execute processes across flux ranks
get,set,lsattr Access, modify, and list broker attributes
hwloc Control/query resource-hwloc service
keygen generate keys for Flux security
kvs Flux key-value store utility
logger create a Flux log entry
module manage Flux extension modules
ping measure round-trip latency to Flux services
proxy Create proxy environment for Flux instance
ps List subprocesses managed by brokers
start bootstrap a local Flux instance
submit submit job requests to a scheduler
user Flux user database client
Most of these have UNIX manual pages as flux-<sub-command>(1),
which can also be accessed using ./flux help <sub-command>.
When flux is launched, it requires PMI-1 in order to bootstrap.
It can use PMI-1 in one of two ways, by inheriting a file descriptor
via the PMI_FD environment variable, or by dlopening a PMI library.
The library name is libpmi.so, unless overridden by the PMI_LIBRARY
environment variable. If a PMI library is not found, flux falls back
to "singleton" operation, where each broker is an independent flux instance.
The PMI bootstrap may be traced by setting the FLUX_PMI_DEBUG environment
variable.
When flux launches flux or an MPI job, it provides PMI-1 to bootstrap the
MPI's runtime. It offers a PMI server and sets the PMI_FD environment
variable to point to an open file descriptor connected to it. It also offers
a libpmi.so library that can be dlopened.
If your system process manager uses PMIx, the libpmi.so compatibility library
provided by the PMIx project should be sufficient to bootstrap flux.
If your version of PMIx was not built with the compatibility libraries
installed, you may build libpmix as a separate package to get them installed.
SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-3.0
LLNL-CODE-76440