perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Mark Feit <>]

Brian Candler writes:

    Follow-up question: is it possible to install pscheduler such that it 
    only responds to incoming test requests, and does not schedule or 
    archive any of its own tests?

pScheduler is completely unaware the rest of the toolkit exists (by design), 
will operate just fine without it and doesn’t do anything unless explicitly 
asked.  Getting meshconfig out of the picture (and making sure your host 
isn’t in any meshes) will turn it into what you’re after.

    I see that there's a "pscheduler-server" package, but that installs a 
    bunch of other stuff including a postgres database.

The database is integral to pScheduler and is where persistent data is stored 
and most of the heavy lifting happens.  This makes pScheduler heavier than 
BWCTL, but not excessively so, and we think the tradeoffs we made for it 
result in a better system overall.
    
    I'm basically just trying to replicate an old bwctl+owamp+iperf setup, 
    as a lightweight test responder, in preparation for the time that the 
    bwctl protocol is no longer supported by perfsonar.

There is a package in the repository called pscheduler-bundle-full that’s 
just pScheduler, the standard tests, tools and archivers that we ship and 
enough for it to do whatever care and feeding it needs.  You don’t get any of 
the niceties the rest of the toolkit provides, but it doesn’t sound like you 
need that.  The only thing missing is the default limit configuration 
installed by the toolkit, but you can snag that from the sources:  
https://github.com/perfsonar/toolkit/blob/master/etc/default_service_configs/pscheduler_limits.conf.

If you’re planning to field this in a resource-constrained environment, my 
daily-use development VMs are 2x2.4 GHz with 2 GiB RAM and pScheduler fits in 
with room to spare.  Obviously, this isn’t one of our officially-recommended 
configurations

--Mark