p-run is a utility that runs a program, script, or series of commands on a large number of hosts in parallel. It simplifies management of machines in computer labs. It uses ssh, and supports password and key-based authentication.

p-run uses libexpect, and will run in parallel across as many processes as specified. When run on a large number of hosts, its parallel nature significantly speeds up administration.

Downloading and compiling

• p-run requires libexpect
• Download p-run. It can be found here
• Uncompress: 'tar xjf p-run-tar.bz2'
• Type 'make'

p-run Usage

   Usage: p-run <arguments>
           [-user <username>] - use this user to log in
           [-host <hostname>] - add <hostname> to the list of hosts
           [-hosts <filename>] - add hosts from <filename> to the list of hosts
           [-cmd <command>] - add <command> to the list of commands
           [-script <filename>] - add commands from <filename>
           [-threads #] - execute in # threads
           [-nopass] - turn off password prompt
	   [-timeout #] - total time p-run is allowed to run (in seconds)
           [-version] - print version information
   

Example

p-run -hosts lists/test -cmd "hostname" -user root -threads 3
3 hosts, 1 commands, 3 threads
Enter password: 
*** - apple - ***

Last login: Mon Mar 31 12:10:39 2003 from asterix.cs.byu.edu
[root@apple root]# hostname
apple
[root@apple root]# 
*** - pear - ***

Last login: Mon Mar 31 12:11:27 2003 from asterix.cs.byu.edu
[root@pear root]# hostname
pear
[root@pear root]# 
*** - hockey - ***

Last login: Mon Mar 31 12:11:27 2003 from asterix.cs.byu.edu
[root@hockey root]# hostname
hockey
[root@hockey root]# 
Total Time: 00:00:01.51, clock time: 00:00:00.53, savings: 00:00:00.98, speedup: 2.84
   

ToDo

Among the things I'd like to do (or have done) with p-run:

• Better handling of invalid password detection. Right now, you're likely to get 40 processes asking for a password.
• An option to quiet the output, or dump output to another file.
• An option for a gui and/or tui. It would be nice to display the number of machines (or a list of machines) currently in process, along with statistics, etc.

License

p-run is released under the GNU General Public License, Version 2, June 1991.