.\" Copyright Lluís Batlle

.\"

.\" This file may be copied under the conditions described

.\" in the LDP GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 1, September 1998

.\" that should have been distributed together with this file.

.\" 

.\" Note: I took the gnu 'ls' man page as an example.

.SH NAME

ts \- task spooler. A simple unix batch system

.SH SYNOPSIS

.BI "ts [" actions "] [" options "] [" command... ]

.sp

Actions:

.BI "[\-KCLhV]

.BI "[\-t ["id ]]

.BI "[\-c ["id ]]

.BI "[\-p ["id ]]

.BI "[\-o ["id ]]

.BI "[\-s ["id ]]

.BI "[\-r ["id ]]

.BI "[\-w ["id ]]

.BI "[\-u ["id ]]

.BI "[\-U <"id - id >]

.sp

Options:

.BI "[\-nfgm]"

.SH DESCRIPTION

.B ts

will run by default a per user unix task queue. The user can add commands to

the queue, watch that queue at any moment, and look at the task results

(actually, standard output and exit error).

.SH SIMPLE USE

Calling

.B ts

with a command will add that command to the queue, and calling it without

commands or parameters will show the task list.

.SH COMMAND OPTIONS

When adding a job to ts, we can specify how it will be run and how will the

results be collected:

.TP

.B "\-n"

Don't store the standard output/error in a file at

.B $TMPDIR

- let it use the

file descriptors decided by the calling process. If it is not used, the

.B jobid

for the new task will be outputed to stdout.

.TP

.B "\-g"

Pass the output through gzip (only if

.B \-n

). Note that the output files will not

have a .gz extension.

.TP

.B "\-f"

Don't put the task into background. Wait the queue and the command run without

getting detached of the terminal. The exit code will be that of the command, and

if used together with \-n, no result will be stored in the queue.

.TP

.B "\-m"

Mail the results of the command (output and exit code) to

.B $TS_MAILTO

, or to the

.B $USER

using

.B /usr/sbin/sendmail.

Look at

.B ENVIRONMENT.

.SH ACTIONS

Instead of giving a new command, we can use the parameters for other purposes:

.TP

.B "\-K"

Kill the

.B ts

server for the calling client. This will remove the unix socket and

all the

.B ts

processes related to the queue. This will not kill the command being

run at that time.

It's not reliable to think that

.B ts -K

will finish when the server is really killed. By now it's a race condition.

.TP

.B "\-C"

Clear the results of finished jobs from the queue.

.TP

.B "\-l"

Show the list of jobs - to be run, running and finished - for the current queue.

This is the default behaviour if

.B ts

is called without options.

.TP

.B "\-t [id]"

Run the system's tail to the output file of the named job, or the last

running/run if not specified.

.TP

.B "\-c [id]"

Run the system's cat to the output file of the named job, or the last

running/run if not specified.

.TP

.B "\-p [id]"

Show the pid of the named job, or the last running/run if not specified.

.TP

.B "\-o [id]"

Show the output file name of the named job, or the last running/run 

if not specified.

.TP

.B "\-s [id]"

Show the job state of the named job, or the last in the queue.

.TP

.B "\-r [id]"

Remove the named job, or the last in the queue.

.TP

.B "\-w [id]"

Wait for the named job, or for the last in the queue.

.TP

.B "\-u [id]"

Make the named job (or the last in the queue) urgent - this means that it goes

forward in the queue so it can run as soon as possible.

.TP

.B "\-U <id-id>"

Interchange the queue positions of the named jobs (separated by a hyphen and no

spaces).

.TP

.B "\-h"

Show help on standard output.

.TP

.B "\-V"

Show the program version.

.SH ENVIRONMENT

.TP

.B "TS_MAXFINISHED"

Limit the number of job results (finished tasks) you want in the queue. Use this

option if you're tired of

.B \-C.

.TP

.B "TS_ONFINISH"

If the variable exists pointing to an executable, it will be run after the

queued jobs. It uses execlp, so

.B PATH

is used if there are no slashes in the variable content. The executable is run

with four parameters:

.B jobid

.B errorlevel

.B output_filename

and

.B command.

.TP

.B "TMPDIR"

As the program output and the unix socket are thought to be stored in a

temporary directory, 

.B TMPDIR

will be used if defined, or

.B /tmp

otherwise.

.TP

.B "TS_SOCKET"

Each queue has a related unix socket. You can specify the socket path with this

environment variable. This way, you can have a queue for your heavy disk

operations, another for heavy use of ram., and have a simple script/alias

wrapper over ts for those special queues. If it's not specified, it will be

.B $TMPDIR/socket-ts.[uid].

.TP

.B "TS_MAILTO"

Send the letters with job results to the address specified in this variable.

Otherwise, they're sent to

.B $USER

or if not defined,

.B nobody.

The system

.B /usr/sbin/sendmail

is used. The

job outputs are not sent as an attachment, so understand the consequences if you

use the

.B \-gm

flags together.

.TP

.B "USER"

As seen above, it's used for the mail destination if

.B TS_MAILTO

is not specified.

.TP

.B "TS_SAVELIST"

If it's defined when starting the queue server (probably the first

.B ts

command run), on SIGTERM the queue status will be saved to the file pointed

by this environment variable - for example, at system shutdown.

.SH BUGS

If you want to run complex commands, you may want to run them through

.B sh -c 'commands...'

Also, remember that stdin/stdout/stderr will be detached, so

don't use your shell's redirection operators when you put a job into background.

If an internal problem is found in runtime, a file

.B /tmp/ts.error

is created, which you can submit to the developer in order to fix the bug.

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR at (1)

.SH AUTHOR

Lluis Batlle i Rossell

.SH NOTES

This page describes

.B ts

.B TRICKS

found in the distribution package can show some ideas on special uses of

.B ts.