Getting Started with Tycoon
This guide assumes that you have already set up your Tycoon account and have access to a machine with the Tycoon client software installed on it.
Finding and Selecting Hosts
The first thing you should do is get a list of machines in the Tycoon cluster. For example, Alice would type the following:
[asmith@alicehost ~]# tycoon get_host_list
She would see a list of available Tycoon machines:
IP Address ---------- 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.5 1.2.3.6 ...
Note that some machines returned by "get_host_list" may be behind a firewall and therefore inaccessible to you.
Creating Host Accounts
Once you have selected a host to run on, you should create an account on that host. Host accounts allow a user to run programs on a specific host. Alice would type the following command to create an account on host providinghost1 and transfer 10 credits:
tycoon host create_account providinghost1 1
Alice would see something like:
Creating host account(s) (may take several minutes)... 1.2.3.4 SSH port number: 11111 1.2.3.4 has booted. 1.2.3.4 created account with initial deposit of 1
Note your SSH port number. You will use this port number to log into and copy files to your host account. This port will usually be the same across different host accounts, but this is not guaranteed.
Accessing Host Accounts
You can access your host account using any ssh client. Examples for Windows are WinSCP for file copying and PuTTY for terminal access. The primary client for UNIX-like systems is OpenSSH. These all work, but you must specify the port given to you when you created your host account.
Instead of explicitly specifying a port number, you can use the wrapper scripts included with Tycoon for ssh and scp. These scripts automatically determine the appropriate port number for a specific Tycoon host. The wrapper scripts only run on Linux.
Here is an example of Alice using the tycoon_scp script to copy files to one of her host accounts:
[asmith@alicehost ~]# tycoon_scp -r my_program providinghost1:
Here is an example of Alice using tycoon_ssh to log into one of her host accounts:
[asmith@alicehost ~]# tycoon_ssh asmith@providinghost1 Last login: Mon May 9 14:35:33 2005 from alicehost [asmith@providinghost1 ~]$
Installing Software
You may need to install software in your remote account. You can login and use the yum program. For example, Alice would use this command to install gcc:
tycoon_ssh root@providinghost1 yum -y install gcc
Alice should see something like:
Setting up Install Process Setting up Repos Reading repository metadata in from local files Resolving Dependencies ... Installed: gcc.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 Dependency Installed: cpp.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 glibc-devel.i386 0:2.3.5-0.fc3.1 glibc-headers.i386 0:2.3.5-0.fc3.1 glibc-kernheaders.i386 0:2.4-9.1.87 Complete!
To install java, use the package name "j2re". For Perl modules, use a package name like "perl-DBD-SQLite". To see a complete list of available packages:
$ yum list available
The most common reason for yum failing is that the host is behind a firewall. To specify a web proxy to yum do something like the following:
tycoon_ssh root@providinghost1 \ env http_proxy=http://web-proxy.corp.com:8088 yum -y install gcc
Changing Resource Allocation
At some point, you may find that you need to run faster or have run out of money. You can add more money to your host accounts. For example, Alice would type this to transfer 1 more credit to 1.2.3.4:
tycoon host fund providinghost1 1
Alice would see the following as a result:
1.2.3.4 funded 1.
