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			     README : Generic NQS


			 Academic Computing Services
			 The University of Sheffield


				Stuart Herbert
			 (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk)
Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 2


Abstract :

	Under grant NTI/48.2 from the New Technologies Sub Committee (NTSC)
	of JISC, the University of Sheffield is maintaining a freely-available
	version of the Network Queueing System (NQS), the de facto standard
	batch processing system for the UNIX operating system.

	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.


Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 3


----------------------------
	Contents
----------------------------

1	Quick Start

1.1	Getting Started

2	A Brief History Of NQS

2.1	About Generic NQS
2.2	About NQS
2.2.1		COSMIC NQS
2.2.2		Monsanto-NQS
2.2.3		Generic NQS
2.2.4		Other Versions Of NQS
2.2.5		Alternatives To NQS

3	Source Code Maintenance

3.1	About The Maintainers
3.1.1		The University of Sheffield
3.1.2		Others
3.2	Purpose
3.3	Bug Fixing
3.4	Integration Of Patches

4	FTP Sites

4.1	Generic NQS Source Code
4.1.1		Home Site
4.1.2		Mirror Sites

5	World-Wide Web Pages

5.1	Generic NQS
5.1.1		Home Page
5.1.2		Mirrors

6	Electronic Mailing Lists

6.1	Archives
6.2	Generic NQS Mailing Lists
6.2.1		Introduction
6.2.2		NQS-Announce
6.2.3		NQS-Developers
6.2.4		NQS-Protocol
6.2.5		NQS-Support
6.3	COSMIC NQS Mailing List
Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 4


----------------------------
1	Quick Start
----------------------------

	--------------------
1.1	Getting Started

	For full instructions on installing, and configuring Generic NQS,
	please see the `INSTALL' document, included with the Generic NQS
	source code.  A HTML version is available from :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Product/GNQS/v3.4x/INSTALL/

	If you encounter any problems, please see the `PROBLEMS' and
	`PROBLEMS.old' documents - they contain full lists of known problems
	with Generic NQS, and solutions/work-arounds where available.

	Finally, 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

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 5


----------------------------
2	A Brief History Of NQS
----------------------------

	--------------------
2.1	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 :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Product/GNQS/v3.4x/Changes/

	and at

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Product/Monsanto_NQS/Changes/

	--------------------
2.2	About NQS

	----------
2.2.1	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 :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Papers/Sterling/

	COSMIC is NASA's Software Technology Transfer Centre, based at
	the University of Georgia since 1966.  Their home page is

	> http://www.cosmic.uga.edu/

	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.

	----------
2.2.2	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 :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Product/Monsanto_NQS/GPL_v1/
Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 6



	After Monsanto-NQS v3.36.0, John Roman moved on to other projects.

	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.

	----------
2.2.3	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
	would 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 will be v3.40.0.

	----------
2.2.4	Other Versions Of NQS

	Monsanto is not the only organisation which has released a version
	of NQS.  Other notable releases are :

	o  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.

	   It is reported that this version will NOT work on SGI IRIX 6.x
	   operating systems - we have been unable to confirm this for
	   ourselves.  If anyone can confirm this, one way or the other,
	   then please get in touch.

	o  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.

	o  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.
Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 7



	o  CERN NQS

	   This is a derivative of COSMIC NQS, developed and enhanced by
	   Christian Biossat at CERN, in Switzerland.  It is freely
	   available, from

	   > ftp://shift.cern.ch/pub/NQS/

	o  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 ;-)

	----------
2.2.5	Alternatives To NQS

	The main alternatives to NQS tend to be based around DQS, developed
	at Florida State University.

	> ftp://ftp.scri.fsu.edu/pub/dqs/

	I last looked at DQS in October, 1994 - you can find my comments at

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Reports/eval_9410/

	There are two major commercial systems which use DQS :

	o  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

	   > http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/project/nqs/Reports/CODINE/

	o  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 :

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 8


	> http://www.unison.com/products/operations/loadbalancer/LoadBalancer.html

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 9


----------------------------
3	Source Code Maintenance
----------------------------

	--------------------
3.1	About The Maintainers

	----------
3.1.1	The University of Sheffield

	The batch systems project at the University of Sheffield has just
	one full-time member of staff, Stuart Herbert
	(S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk), with management support by Academic
	Computing Services, under the Deputy Director, Chris Cartledge
	(C.Cartledge@sheffield.ac.uk) and the head of UNIX support, Peter
	Froggatt (P.Froggatt@sheffield.ac.uk).

	We provide the following services (more detail in later sections) :

	o  Maintenance of Generic NQS.

	o  The WWW Home Pages for Generic NQS.

	o  The FTP home site for Generic NQS.

	o  Assistance on installation and configuration to UK Academia

	o  World-Wide support (on a very limited basis)

	----------
3.1.2	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
	>  -----------------------------------------------------------------

	--------------------
3.2	Purpose

	We provide the following maintenance for Generic NQS :

	o  Bug-fixing for reports originating from UK Academic sites.

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 10


	o  Integration of patches received from any contributor.

	o  Co-ordination of new releases.

	o  `Official' world-wide releases of new versions.

	Our objectives are :

	o  To produce a highly-portable version of NQS.

	o  To produce a highly-robust version of NQS.

	o  To produce a highly-extensible version of NQS.

	--------------------
3.3	Bug Fixing

	Under the terms and conditions of our funding, we are permitted to
	actively identify, locate, and solve problems with the source code
	which are reported to us from UK Academic sites ONLY.  Our funding
	body has made it quite clear that, in their opinion, we should NOT
	spend time performing this task for non-UK-Academic sites.

	However, it is often the case that a problem reported from outside
	UK Academia will also affect UK Academic sites, and so we attempt
	to fit in as much `world-wide' support as possible, if only as a
	preventative measure.

	For a list of known problems with Generic NQS, please consult the
	file `PROBLEMS', included with the source code distribution.  You
	can find a HTML copy at :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Product/GNQS/v3.4x/Problems/

	--------------------
3.4	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.

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 11


----------------------------
4	FTP Sites
----------------------------

	--------------------
4.1	Generic NQS Source Code

	----------
4.1.1	Home Site

	The official home site of Generic NQS is :

	> ftp://ftp.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/

	----------
4.1.2	Mirror Sites

	This is mirrored at the following sites :

	> ftp://myrddraal.shef.ac.uk/pub/NQS/

	   > ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Network/distrib/nqs/

	If ftp.shef.ac.uk is unavailable, try myrddraal - it's my workstation,
	so it tends to be up when everything else isn't.

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 12


----------------------------
5	World-Wide Web Pages
----------------------------

	--------------------
5.1	Generic NQS

	----------
5.1.1	Home Page

	The official home page of Generic NQS is :

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs

	----------
5.1.2	Mirrors

	This is mirrored at the following sites :

	> http://myrddraal.shef.ac.uk/Computers/OS/UNIX/Software/NQS/

	I'm interested in finding a site in North America which is prepared
	to mirror my Web pages ...

Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 13


----------------------------
6	Electronic Mailing Lists
----------------------------

	--------------------
6.1	Archives

	All the electronic mailing lists below are available, in archive
	form, from

	> http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/nqs/Archives/

	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 this section.

	--------------------
6.2	Generic NQS Mailing Lists

	----------
6.2.1	Introduction

	The University of Sheffield currently maintains a number of mailing
	lists, via the Mailbase service.  Mailbase's home page is

	> http://www.mailbase.ac.uk

	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

	----------
6.2.2	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.

	----------
6.2.3	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
Sep  1 15:00 1995                                           Page 14


	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.

	----------
6.2.4	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.

	This list is currently dead, because I don't have time to actively
	lead the discussion and get things rolling properly.  If anyone is
	interested in running this side of NQS's future, please get in touch.

	----------
6.2.5	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.

	--------------------
6.3	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.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuart Herbert - (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk)
