= Alex and Matthew playing with python parallel programming =

Ipython1 - http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/IPython1
Docs therefore - http://ipython.scipy.org/doc/ipython1/html

Then we copied the sshx script from the ipython1 distro into /imaging/local/linux/bin

== Shell setup ==

The engines use the `~/.bashrc` to initialize environment variables for the shell (this does not happen by default because `sh` is used, which does not read startup scripts).  The problem being that Alex is set up with the usual default `tcsh`, which uses `~/.cshrc`.

Accordingly, we added these lines to `~/bashrc`:

{{{
# FSL stuff - if we are using FSL
export FSLDIR=/imaging/local/linux/bin/fsl-4.0.1
. ${FSLDIR}/etc/fslconf/fsl.sh
export PATH=${FSLDIR}/bin:$PATH

cbu_img_sys=/imaging/local/linux
# If on linux, set stuff for libraries, and python
if [ "`/bin/uname`" = "Linux" ]; then
    export PATH=${cbu_img_sys}/bin:$PATH
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${cbu_img_sys}/lib
fi
}}}
== Cluster setup ==

We made a tiny script to test with:

{{{#!python
controller = dict(host='l42',
                  engine_port=None, # default is 10105
                  control_port=None,
                  )

# keys are hostnames, values are the number of engines on that host
engines = dict(l31=2,
               l32=2,
               l33=2,
               l34=2,
               )
}}}

Then we ran `ipcluster -f small_cluster.py`

and got this:

{{{
Starting controller:
Starting engines:   
Sarting 2 engines on l34
Sarting 2 engines on l32
Sarting 2 engines on l33
Sarting 2 engines on l31

Your cluster is up and running.

For interactive use, you can make a MultiEngineClient with:

from ipython1.kernel import client
mec = client.MultiEngineClient(('l42',10105))

You can then cleanly stop the cluster from IPython using:

mec.kill(controller=True)
}}}