openbsd-ports/infrastructure/man/man1/dpb.1

.\"	$OpenBSD: dpb.1,v 1.7 2010/10/27 17:53:24 espie Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2010 Marc Espie <espie@openbsd.org>
.\"
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.Dd $Mdocdate: October 27 2010 $
.Dt DPB 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm dpb
.Nd distributed ports builder
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm dpb
.Bk -words
.Op Fl aceqrsuUx
.Op Fl A Ar arch
.Op Fl b Ar logfile
.Op Fl h Ar hosts
.Op Fl j Ar n
.Op Fl L Ar logdir
.Op Fl m Ar threshold
.Op Fl P Ar subdirlist
.Op Fl S Ar sizefile
.Op Fl t Ar ctimeout
.Op Fl T Ar dtimeout
.Op Ar pkgpath ...
.Ek
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is used to build ports on a cluster of machines.
Its name is an acronym for
.Sq distributed ports builder .
.Nm
walks ports to figure out dependencies, and starts building ports
as soon as it can.
It can take
.Ar pkgpath ...
to build as parameters.
Options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width pkgpathlonger
.It Fl A Ar arch
Build packages for given architecture, selecting relevant hosts from the
cluster.
By default, the current host's architecture will be used.
.It Fl a
Walk the whole tree and builds all packages (default if no pkgpath is given).
.It Fl b Ar logfile
Prime the heuristics module with a previous build log, so that packages that
take a long time to build will happen earlier.
.It Fl c
Clean port working directory and log before each build.
.It Fl e
The listing job is extra and won't be given back to the pool when it's
finished.
.It Fl h Ar hosts
File with hosts to use for building.
One host per line, plus properties, such as:
.Bd -literal
espie@aeryn jobs=4 arch=i386
.Ed
Properties are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width memory=150
.It arch=value
Architecture of the concerned host.
(there should be a startup task to check consistency, but
currently this has to be set manually on heterogeneous networks.)
.It jobs=n
Number of jobs to run on that host, defaults to hw.ncpu.
.It memory=thr
Builds everything below that wrkdir threshold in /tmp, assuming
it is a memory filesystem.
Avoid for now, as mfs has serious race conditions which yield
random errors under stress conditions such as bulk build.
.It sf=n
Speed factor.
An estimate of that machine's speed with that number of jobs
compared to other machines in the same network.
Works better with small values, in the range of 1..50.
The machine (or machines) with the highest speed factor will
get access to all jobs, whereas other machines will be clamped
to stuff which does not take too long.
Requires previous build information to be effective.
.It timeout=s
Defines a specific connection timeout for ssh to that host.
.El
The
.Ar hosts
file can also define a start-up script, as
.Bd -literal
STARTUP=path
.Ed
which will be run at start-up on each machine.
.It Fl j Ar n
Number of concurrent local jobs to run (defaults to hw.ncpu if no hosts file).
.It Fl L Ar logdir
Choose a log directory.
.Po
Defaults to
.Pa ${PORTSDIR}/logs/${ARCH}
.Pc .
.It Fl m Ar threshold
Build ports besides the memory threshold within
.Pa /tmp .
Avoid for now, as mfs has serious race conditions which yield
random errors under stress conditions such as bulk build.
.It Fl P Ar subdirlist
Read list of pkgpaths from file
.It Fl q
Don't quit while errors/locks are around.
.It Fl r
Random build order.
Disregard any kind of smart heuristics.
Useful to try to find missing build dependencies.
.It Fl s
Compute workdir sizes before cleaning up, and stash them in log file
.Pa ${LOGDIR}/size.log .
.It Fl S Ar sizefile
Read a size log file and use it for choosing to put WRKDIR in memory.
.It Fl t Ar ctimeout
Connection timeout for ssh.
Defaults to 60 seconds.
.It Fl T Ar dtimeout
Display timeout (in seconds) while waiting for jobs to finish, so that the
display is updated even if jobs didn't finish.
Defaults to 10 seconds.
.It Fl u
Update existing packages during dependency solving.
Can be used to run a bulk-build on a machine with installed packages,
but might break a bit, since some packages only build on a clean machine
right now.
.It Fl U
Insist on updating existing packages during dependency solving,
even if the new package apparently didn't change.
.It Fl x
No tty report, only report really important things, like hosts going down
and coming back up, build errors, or builds not progressing.
.El
.Pp
.Nm
figures out in which order to build things on the fly, and constantly
displays information relative to what's currently building.
There's a list currently running, one line per task, with the task name,
local pid, the build host name, and advancement based on the log file size.
This is followed by a three-line display:
.Bl -tag -width BB=
.It I=
number of built packages that can be installed.
.It B=
number of built packages, not yet known to be installable,
because of possibly run depends that still need to be built.
.It Q=
number of packages in the queue, e.g., stuff that can be built now, assuming
we have a free slot.
.It T=
number of packages to build, where dependencies are not yet resolved.
.It !=
number of ignored packages.
.It L=
list of packages that cannot currently be built because of locks.
.It E=
list of packages in error, that cannot currently be built.
.El
.Pp
Note that those numbers refer to pkgpaths known to
.Nm .
In general, those numbers will be slightly higher than the actual number
of packages being built, since several paths may lead to the same package.
.Pp
.Nm
uses some heuristics to try to maximise Q as soon as possible.
There's also a provision for a feedback-directed build, where timings from
a previous build can be used to try to build long-running jobs first.
.Sh LOCKS AND ERRORS
When building a package,
.Nm
produces a lockfile in the lock directory, whose name is deduced from
the basic pkgpath with slashes replaced by dots, and a possible second lock
with the fullpkgpath.
This lockfile is filled with such info as the build start time or the host.
.Pp
At the end of a succesful build, these lockfiles are removed.
The fullpkgpath lock will stay around in case of errors.
.Pp
In this case, it contains the status of the last task that was run
.Po
raw
value from
.Xr wait 2
.Pc ,
and the name of the next task in the build pipeline (with todo=<nothing>
in case of failure during clean-up).
Normal list of tasks is:
.Ar depends prepare fetch patch configure build fake package clean .
.Pp
At the end of each job,
.Nm
rechecks the lock directory for existing lockfiles.
If some locks have vanished,
it will put the corresponding paths back in the queue and attempt
another build.
.Pp
This eases manual repairs: if a package does not build, the user can look
at the log, go to the port directory, fix the problem, and then remove the lock.
.Nm
will pick up the ball and keep building without interruption.
.Pp
One can also run several
.Nm
in parallel.
This is not optimal, since each
.Nm
ignores the others, and only uses the lock info to avoid the other's
current work, but it can be handy: in an emergency, one can start a second
.Nm
to obtain a specific package right now, in parallel with the original
.Nm .
.Pp
Note that
.Nm
is very careful not to run two builds from the same pkgpath at the
same time, even on different machines:
in some cases, MULTI_PACKAGES and FLAVOR combinations may lead to the
same package being built simultaneously, and since the package repository
is shared, this can easily lead to trouble.
.Pp
.Sh SHUTTING DOWN GRACEFULLY
.Nm
periodically checks for a file named
.Pa stop
in its log directory
If this file exists, then it won't start new jobs, and shutdown when
the current jobs are finished.
.Sh FILES
Apart from producing packages,
.Nm
will create a number of log files under
.Pa ${PORTSDIR}/logs/{$ARCH} :
.Bl -tag -width engine.log
.It Pa build.log
Actual build log.
Each line summarizes build of a single pkgpath, as:
.Sq pkgpath host time logsize (detailed timing)[!]
where time is the actual build time in seconds, host is the machine name
where this occurred, logsize is the corresponding log file size,
and a ! is appended in case the build didn't succeed.
.Pp
The detailed timing info gives a run-down of the build, with clean, fetch,
prepare, patch (actually extract+patch), configure, build, fake, package, clean
detailed timing info.
Note that the actual build time starts at
.Sq extract
and finishes at
.Sq package .
.It Pa clean.log
Paths that do not clean correctly, and required sudo to clean the directory.
.It Pa size.log
Size of work directory at the end of each build
.It Pa engine.log
Build engine log.
Each line corresponds to a state change for a pkgpath and starts with the pid
of
.Nm ,
plus a timestamp of the log entry.
.Bl -tag -width BB:
.It ^
pkgpath temporarily put aside, because a job is running in the same directory.
.It B
pkgpath built.
.It I
pkgpath can be installed.
.It J
job to build pkgpath started.
Also records the host used for the build.
.It L
job did not start, existing lock detected.
.It N
job did not finish.
The host may have gone down.
.It P
built package is no longer required for anything.
.It Q
pkgpath queued as buildable whenever a slot is free.
.It T
pkgpath to build.
.It V
pkgpath put back in the buildable queue, after job that was running in
the same directory returned.
.El
.It Pa locks/
Directory where locks are created.
The slash in a pkgpath is replaced with a dot like so:
.Pa locks/devel.make
to flatten the structure.
.It Pa packages/pkgname.log
one file or symlink per pkgname.
.It Pa paths/some/path.log
one file or symlink per pkgpath.
.It Pa signature.log
Discrepancies between hosts that prevent them from starting up.
.It Pa stats.log
Simple log of the B=... line summaries.
Mostly useful for making plots and tweaking performance.
.It Pa vars.log
Logs the directories that were walked in the ports tree for dependency
information.
.El
.Sh BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
.Nm
performs best with lots of paths to build.
When just used to build a few ports, there's a high risk of starvation
as there are bottlenecks in parts of the tree.
.Pp
.Nm
considers all pkgpaths it explores as valid candidates for packages.
This is not the case for some pkgpath:patch depends.
It should not try to reach them.
.Pp
.Nm
does not properly distinguish between default flavors and empty flavors.
This leads to a few errors in some multi-packages that have pseudo-flavors
that prevent their build.
.Pp
.Nm
Hot fixes to a port that change the pkgname or other properties won't be
used by
.Nm
after removing the lock.
It should rescan the directory for new properties and will eventually.
.Pp
On heterogeneous networks, calibration of build info and choice of speed
factors is not perfect, and somewhat a dark art.
Using distinct speed factors on a build log that comes from a single
machine works fine, but using the build info coming from several machines
does not work all that well.
.Pp
.Nm
should check
.Pa /usr/include
and
.Pa /usr/X11R6/include
for consistency, but it doesn't.
.Pp
When an host fails consistency check, there is no way to re-add it after
fixing the problem.
You have to stop
.Nm ,
cleanup and restart.
.Pp
There's a bug in mfs that prevents it from proper use in bulk builds.
.Pp
The default limits in
.Pa login.conf
are too small for bulk builds on any kind of parallel machines.
Bump number of processes.
.Pp
Even though
.Nm
tries really hard to check heterogeneous networks for sanity (checking
shared libraries and .la files), it is still dependent on the user to
make sure all the hosts build ports the same way.
.Pp
Make sure your NFS setup is consistent (the ports dir itself should be
exported, including distfiles and packages repository, but the WRKOBJDIR
should not be in most cases). Pay particular attention to discrepancies
in
.Pa /etc/mk.conf .
.Pp
Also,
.Nm
connects to external hosts through
.Xr ssh 1 ,
relying on
.Xr ssh_config 5
for any special cases.
.Sh AUTHOR
Marc Espie
.Sh HISTORY
The original
.Nm dpb
command was written by Nikolay Sturm.
This version is a complete rewrite from scratch using all the stuff
we learnt over the years to make it better.
.Pp
There are still a number of changes to make, and some possible avenues
to explore.
.Pp
Better build feedback for next builds would be nice: we need a way to
calibrate build logs that contain info for several machines (so that we
can gauge whether a machine is fast or slow).
It might make sense to have some kind of machine affinity for big packages
in a cluster, so that we avoid reinstalling big things on each machine if
we can get away with installing stuff on a single machine.
We should probably keep the pkgnames around with the pkgpath in the build-log,
so that we give more credibility to build times that correspond to the
exact same pkgnames.
.Pp
We should integrate mirroring functionalities.
This mostly involves having
.Sq special
jobs with no cpu requirements that can run locally,
and to have a step prior to
.Sq tobuild ,
where fetch would occur.
The same logic that was used for pkgpaths should be used to handle distfiles,
and we should probably add some kind of lock based on the ftp site being
used to grab distfiles.
(This is low priority, as most build machines currently being used already
have the distfiles).