Tasker Health Checks

By default, the vovtasker does not perform many health checks. If the jobs can be executed successfully, that is normally enough of a check.

In some large farms, it may be useful to activate additional checks, by invoking the tasker with the option -H [PpDdWwUu], where the lower case characters mean "disable" and the upper case characters mean "enable" of a particular check.

Built-in Checks in vovtasker

Check Name Char Description
DiskSpace d Check space in /tmp and /usr/tmp
WritePerm w Check write permissions in /tmp and /usr/tmp
Portmap p Check that the portmap daemon is responsive
UserScript u Check by executing an adminstrator-created, installation-wide script (see below)
From the command line, you can use the option -H in vovtasker, as in the following example, which activates only the DiskSpace test:
% vovtasker -H Dwpu -a my_test_tasker 
From the taskers.tcl file, you can use the option -health STRING in a similar way:
## Fragment of taskers.tcl
vtk_tasker_define myHost -name my_test_tasker -health DWPU   

User Created Script

When enabled, the vovtasker will run an adminstrator-created script placed in a specific location in the installation. There are security considerations in using this check, as the script will be run by any project that enables the UserScript checks.:
  1. The script must be placed at $VOVDIR/local/tasker/health_user_script.csh
  2. The script should be secured appropriately to prevent unauthorized modification.
  3. The script will run as the user under which the project was started.