README : Generic NQS v3.5x
June 1996
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk)Document copyright ©. All rights reserved.
Abstract
This document is intended to be read first by anyone wishing to
compile, install, and use Generic NQS. It provides general
information about Generic NQS, and plenty of pointers to other
sources of information.
Contents
Click here for a plain-text version of this paper. Click here for a copy of this document in Microsoft RTF format, suitable for printing (if available).
Quick Start
Getting Started
To configure, compile, and install Generic NQS 3.50, please run
the `SETUP' script. SETUP is a fully-interactive installation
system which will help you through every step necessary to
configure, compile, and install Generic NQS.
If your C compiler by default does not support ANSI C, then you need
to run the SETUP script as follows :
> SETUP -CC "compile flags"
where compile flags is replaced with the name of your compiler, and
the options necessary to enable ANSI C.
Please read the rest of this README when you can spare the time.
Even if you don't read anything else, please read the section on
electronic mailing lists, and take the time to subscribe to them.
Best regards,
Stu
A Brief History Of NQS
About Generic NQS
Thank you for your interest in Generic NQS.
Generic NQS is the continuing development of Monsanto-NQS, itself
descended directly from the original COSMIC NQS, written under
contract to NASA by Sterling Software, Inc.
Generic NQS incorporates enhancements from Boeing, CERN, and a large
number of individual contributors. Full details of contributions
since October, 1994, can be found at :
and at
About NQS
COSMIC NQS
The Network Queueing System (NQS) was written for NASA in 1985 by
Sterling Software, Inc. Details of their work can be found in
this paper :
COSMIC is NASA's Software Technology Transfer Centre, based at
the University of Georgia since 1966. Their home page is
COSMIC released two versions of NQS, known as COSMIC NQS v1, and
COSMIC NQS v2. Due to US law, when US companies purchased COSMIC
NQS, they purchased full rights to the code, rather than just a
license to use the code.
Monsanto-NQS
The Monsanto Company purchased COSMIC NQS v1, and John Roman
released and maintained Monsanto-NQS up to, and including,
Monsanto-NQS v3.36.0. During this time, enhancements from COSMIC
NQS v2, CERN, Boeing, and many individuals were added to the
Monsanto-NQS source tree. Monsanto-NQS was released under the Free
Software Foundation's GNU General Public License.
After Monsanto-NQS v3.36.0, John Roman moved on to other projects.
Many thanks to John for the work he did on Monsanto-NQS.
The University of Sheffield had recently secured funding from the
New Technologies Sub Committee of JISC to investigate freely-available
batch processing systems for UNIX. Work began in October, 1994,
with an evaluation of freely-available batch processing systems.
After consultation with other UK Academic sites, they decided to
support, and enhance, Monsanto-NQS further.
Generic NQS
In July, 1995, after consultation with John Roman, it was agreed
that new releases would no longer be called Monsanto-NQS. It was
felt that the new name should be site-neutral, so that name changes
will not be required in the future when the role of maintainer
passes on to someone new. The acronim GNQS was adopted, as a play
on GNU.
The last release of Monsanto-NQS was v3.37.1. The first release of
Generic NQS was v3.40.0, on 29th September 1995. The first release
of Generic NQS 3.50.0 was on 5th June, 1996.
Other Versions Of NQS
Monsanto is not the only organisation which has released a version
of NQS. Other notable releases are :
- SGI 4D/NQS
This was supplied with the IRIX 4 operating system. However,
it is not compatible with other versions of NQS, and is no
longer supported by Silicon Graphics.
This software is reported to run fine on IRIX 5 and IRIX 6.
However, IRIX 6 users should note that, because 4D/NQS is a 32-bit
application, it cannot cope with setting resources larger than 4
gigabytes.
- Sterling NQS (now known as Connect: Queue, I believe)
SGI are currently supplying this to IRIX customers who have
previously relied on 4D/NQS. Previous versions appeared to
supply on the basic COSMIC NQS functionality - I've not looked
at more recent versions.
- Cray NQE
This is stock NQS, with a significant number of proprietry
enhancements, sold by CraySoft. Cray NQE is highly customisable,
includes GUI and HTML interfaces, and is worth a look if you
want a well-supported commercial NQS variant.
Cray also publish a document containing the original NQS Network
Protocol specification.
- CERN NQS
This is a derivative of COSMIC NQS, developed and enhanced by
Christian Biossat at CERN, in Switzerland. It is freely
available, from
- MCC NQS
This is a derivative of CERN NQS, featuring enhanced support for
Solaris 2 and UXP/M, plus a number of extra features, created by
the Manchester Computing Centre, UK. This version falls under
the same copyright as CERN NQS.
If you have further information about these versions of NQS, or
about any others, then please let me know. URLs in particular
would be useful ;-)
Alternatives To NQS
The main alternatives to NQS tend to be based around DQS, developed
at Florida State University.
I last looked at DQS in October, 1994 - you can find my comments at
There are two major commercial systems which use DQS :
- GENIAS CODINE
This is a well featured system (which also uses technology from
Condor to provide checkpointing) available from Germany.
I wrote a report about CODINE v3.3 vs Monsanto-NQS v3.36.6,
available from
- IBM LoadLeveller
I've never seen this product, or any documentation for it, so
I can't comment. If anyone wants to contribute some info, please
get in touch.
Another alternative is LoadBalancer, from Unison. To be honest,
I don't know if this is based on DQS, or is a complete work in its
own right. The literature for LoadBalancer claims that it can
handle more transactions per second than any other batch processing
system. You can find out more from :
Source Code Maintenance
About The Maintainers
Stuart Herbert
The main maintainer and co-ordinator of Generic NQS releases is
Stuart Herbert. A former graduate and member of staff at the
University of Sheffield, Stuart was previously Project Officer
responsible full-time for the support of Generic NQS under JISC grant
NTI/48.2. Stuart now continues to maintain Generic NQS in his spare
time.
This means that it can take up to a week for me to reply to email.
I'll do my best to reply within 2 days, but my new job may involve a
fair bit of travel at short notice, so please bear with me. In the
meantime, if you have any problems, then the NQS-Support mailing list
readers may be able to help you out ...
Others
I'm looking for programmers who are prepared to contribute time and
effort to maintain a port of Generic NQS to different versions of
UNIX. If you can help maintain the platform-specific parts of
Generic NQS, then please contact me.
The following ports are actively maintained by the following people:
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Platform | Maintainer
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Generic source tree | Stu
> IRIX 5.x | Dave Safford (saff@tamu.edu)
> IRIX 6.x, 32-bit | Dave Safford (saff@tamu.edu)
> Linux | Stu
> Solaris 2.3 | Stu
> UNICOS v8 | Dave Safford (saff@tamu.edu)
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
Purpose
We provide the following maintenance for Generic NQS :
- Bug-fixing for all reports.
- Integration of patches received from any contributor.
- Co-ordination of new releases.
- `Official' world-wide releases of new versions.
Our objectives are :
- To produce a highly-portable version of NQS.
- To produce a highly-robust version of NQS.
- To produce a highly-extensible version of NQS.
Bug Fixing
If you encounter a problem with Generic NQS, then we want to know
about it. If the problem can be reproduced, use qmgr to set the
debugging level to `5', reproduce the problem, and send a description
of the problem, along with a copy of the NQS logfile, to
NQS-Developers@mailbase.ac.uk.
Integration Of Patches
If you look through the CHANGES file, included with the source code,
you'll see that the majority of those changes have originated from
outside the University of Sheffield.
If you add new functionality to Generic NQS, or port it to a
previously unsupported platform, or fix some bugs, then we'd welcome
your patch. Personally, I prefer patch files on the entire tree,
made using the command :
> diff -u --recursive --new-file <old source tree> <new source tree>
New patches are normally integrated into the very next release of
Generic NQS, unless your patch raises issues which must be addressed
first.
FTP Sites
Generic NQS Source Code
Home Site
The official home site of Generic NQS is :
World-Wide Web Pages
Generic NQS
Home Page
The official home page of Generic NQS is :
Electronic Mailing Lists
Archives
All the electronic mailing lists below are available, in archive
form, from
PLEASE NOTE that, for lists which are not maintained by the
University of Sheffield, the archives only cover postings to the
lists since our staff joined the lists.
If there are any more NQS-related mailing lists, please let me know,
and I'll add them to the archives, and to this document.
Generic NQS Mailing Lists
Introduction
The University of Sheffield currently maintains a number of mailing
lists, via the Mailbase service. Mailbase's home page is
To join any of the lists, send the following command to
`Mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk' :
> join <list-name> <your first name> <your last name>
> stop
NQS-Announce
This is a moderated list, which carries announcements of new
releases of Generic NQS. I'm also happy to allow any announcements
of other NQS products, or of any products related to NQS.
Announcements of new releases of Generic NQS include full lists of
what's changed since the last full release of Generic NQS. This is
normally the ONLY place where we announce new releases.
I recommend that, if you use Generic NQS, you should subscribe to
this list.
NQS-Developers
This is an unmoderated list, which carries most of the discussion of
the on-going development of Generic NQS. It also carries
announcements of pre-releases of Generic NQS - these are test
versions which are released so that the NQS community can help
ensure that they work, before they are announced properly.
I recommend subscribing to this list if you want to keep an eye on
where Generic NQS is going, and/or especially if you intend to work
on the Generic NQS source code yourself.
NQS-Protocol
This is an unmoderated list for the discussion of devising a new
networking protocol for the NQS family of software. The current
protocol is a binary one, which does not allow for easy expansion
without the danger of breaking backwards compatibility. I'm looking
to introduce a new, ASCII-based protocol which can eventually be
turned over to the Internet Engineering Task Force to (hopefully)
become a recognised standard on the Internet.
Some progress has been made, and a first draft document is now
available :
NQS-Support
This is an unmoderated list. If you have a problem with GNQS, and
you need help, then this is the place to ask. While I welcome
private mail to me, I do recommend that you at least cc: your mail
to this list; that way, others can help if I'm not available.
All Generic NQS users should probably subscribe to this list,
especially if you're in need of help.
COSMIC NQS Mailing List
COSMIC also maintain an electronic mailing list,
``nqs-list@cossack.cosmic.uga.edu''. To subscribe, send the
following message to listserv@cossack.cosmic.uga.edu :
> subscribe nqs-list
I've only recently (August 1995) subscribed to this list, and so far
the only traffic I've seen on the list are replies to my own queries.
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