The pvmd publishes the address of the socket to which local tasks connect
in a file named
/tmp/pvmd.uid.
uid is your numeric user id
(generally in the third field of your passwd entry).
If PVM was built with the SHAREDTMP option
(used when a cluster of machines shares a /tmp directory),
the file will be named /tmp/pvmd.uid.hostname.
See §
for more information on how
this file is used.
The pvmd creates the socket address file while starting up, and removes it while shutting down. If while starting up, it finds the file already exists, it prints an error message and exits. If the pvmd can't create the file because the permissions of /tmp are set incorrectly or the filesystem is full, it won't be able to start up.
If the pvmd is killed with un uncatchable signal or other catastrophic event such as a (Unix) machine crash, you must remove the socket address file before another pvmd will start on that host.
Note that if the pvmd is compiled with option OVERLOADHOST, it will start up even if the address file already exists (creating it if it doesn't). It doesn't consider the existence of the address file an error. This allows disjoint virtual machines owned by the same user to use overlapping sets of hosts. Tasks not spawned by PVM can only connect to the first pvmd running on an overloaded host, however, unless they can somehow guess the correct socket address of one of the other pvmds.