ipcluster local -n 4 fails

[astrofrog]

The following section in the documentation says to type the following command to start up a controller and engines:

ipcluster local -n 4

However, this gives the error:

usage: ipcluster [-h] [-v] {stop,start,create,list} ...
ipcluster: error: argument Global.subcommand: invalid choice: 'local' (choose from 'stop', 'start', 'create', 'list')

Should the command be:

ipcluster start -n 4

[minrk]

You are correct, the command should be ipcluster start -n 4. The local/ssh/mpi switch is no longer available at the command-line, and must be specified in the ipcluster-config.py in ~/.ipython/cluster_<profile>/

the scripts were refactored (a long time ago now), and we still need to update the docs.

This is already reported as Issue #7

[minrk]

apologies: this is specifically #6, but #6 and #7 are related to the same code changes.

[astrofrog]

Thanks, and sorry for the duplicate. I noticed after submitting the ticket that the whole documentation for ipcluster is out of date. I'd be very interested to learn how to use ipcluster with remote machines, especially over ssh. Is there somewhere else I can get that information from for now?

[minrk]

Honestly, I don't know of a better place than the ip<x>_config.py files that will be in ~/.ipython/cluster_default/ if you have ever used ipcluster. We are in the process of entirely replacing IPython.kernel with IPython.zmq.parallel, but that has not yet been merged into master, so the kernel is not getting a great deal of attention, and kernel will stick around for 0.11.

When you say "ipcluster" do you really mean the ipcluster script, or the whole machinery? Because ipcluster is just a convenience script that calls ipcontroller and ipengine a number of times. The ssh mode in ipcluster literally just did:

ssh <host> ipengine

several times, which you can do just as easily with your own scripts if you want. You will need to distribute the furls if it is not on a shared filesystem, as described in the docs, that has not changed. The descriptions of ipcontroller/ipengine are still fairly up-to-date.

[astrofrog]

Ok, thanks! I'll just use ipcontroller and ipengine instead.