Users can interact with Tycoon through the
tycoon command-line agent. This agent allows
users to manually control how their currency and jobs are
distributed across hosts.
The command-line agent allows users to manually set the amounts spent
at different hosts. Users can then manually log into those hosts
using ssh clients. Users must manually
fund their host accounts again as the funds are depleted.
The basic agent is installed as
/usr/bin/tycoon. Its system-wide
configuration options are in
/etc/tycoon.conf. User-specific
configuration options are in
˜/.tycoon/tycoon.conf. All of these
options can also be set from the command line using the "-o"
options. Described below are the user-specific options that must be set:
This is the user's bank account name.
This is the user's default host account name. This is the account name that the user uses to log into providing hosts. This is set when the user creates accounts on Tycoon hosts (see below).
To run the basic agent:
tycoon [options] sls | bank ... | host ...
The agent has a hierarchical command structure, e.g., "tycoon host" has subcommands. At each command level, the "-h" option will print help about that level. For example, "tycoon -h" prints general help, "tycoon host -h" prints help specific to host commands, and "tycoon host create_account -h" prints help specific to host account creation.
The following sections describe the subcommands in more detail.
tycoon user setup
bank_account_name
host_account_name
ssh_public_key_file_name
XXX Undocumented.
tycoon best_response
budget
deadline
nodes
This returns a list of host bid utility budget lines representing the distribution of a total budget ($) across hosts in an optimal way according to the Best Response algorithm. Budget / deadline (s) is the continuos cost deducted if the allocated resource shares are used. Nodes is the maximum number of nodes you would like to spend money on. It may be left out in which case as many nodes as possible are bid on.
tycoon get_performance
budget
deadline
nodes
probability
This reports the performance (CPU Mhz) to expect when spending a given budget ($) from now to a deadline (seconds) on a number of nodes with a certain probability (0..1).
tycoon get_probability
budget
deadline
nodes
performance
This reports the probability of getting the performance (CPU Mhz) given when spending budget ($) from now to a deadline (seconds) on a number of nodes.
tycoon get_price
deadline
nodes
performance
probability
This reports the budget ($) to spend to get the given performance (CPU Mhz) from now to the deadline (seconds) with a given probability (0..1) on a number of nodes.