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GROUPS.CONF(5) ClusterShell User Manual GROUPS.CONF(5)

NAME

groups.conf - Configuration file for ClusterShell node groups

DESCRIPTION

The ClusterShell library obtains its node groups configuration from the following sources, in decreasing order of precedence:

1.
$CLUSTERSHELL_CFGDIR/groups.conf (only used when $CLUSTERSHELL_CFGDIR is defined)
2.
user configuration file ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/clustershell/groups.conf, defaults to $HOME/.config/clustershell/groups.conf)
3.
Python virtual environment ({sys.prefix}/etc/clustershell/groups.conf)
4.
local pip user installation ($HOME/.local/etc/clustershell/groups.conf)
5.
system-wide configuration file (/etc/clustershell/groups.conf)



For each parameter, the first obtained value will be used. If no groups.conf is found, group support will be disabled.

Additional configuration files are also read from the directories set by the confdir option, if present. See the confdir option below for further details.

Configuration files have a format in the style of RFC 822 potentially composed of several sections which may be present in any order. There are two types of sections: Main and Group_source:

Global configuration options. There should be only one Main section.
The Group_source section(s) define the configuration for each node group source (or namespace). This configuration consists of external command definitions (map, mapall, all, list and reverse).

Only Group_source section(s) are allowed in additional configuration files.

[Main] OPTIONS

Configuration parameters of the Main section are described below.

Specify the default group source (group namespace) used by the NodeSet parser when the user does not explicitly specify the group source (e.g. "@io").
Optional list of directories where the ClusterShell library should look for .conf files which define group sources to use. Each file in these directories with the .conf suffix should contain one or more Group_source sections as documented in [Group_source] options below. These will be merged with the group sources defined in /etc/clustershell/groups.conf to form the complete set of group sources that ClusterShell will use. Duplicate Group_source sections are not allowed. Note: .conf files that are not readable by the current user are ignored (except the one that defines the default group source). The variable $CFGDIR is replaced by the path of the highest priority configuration directory found (where groups.conf resides). The default confdir value enables both system-wide and any installed user configuration (thanks to $CFGDIR). Duplicate directory paths are ignored. groupsdir is accepted as an alias for confdir and takes precedence when both are defined.
Optional list of directories where the ClusterShell library should look for .yaml files that define in-file group dictionaries. No need to call external commands for these files, they are parsed by the ClusterShell library itself. Multiple group source definitions in the same file are supported. The variable $CFGDIR is replaced by the path of the highest priority configuration directory found (where groups.conf resides). The default autodir value enables both system-wide and any installed user configuration (thanks to $CFGDIR). Duplicate directory paths are ignored.

[Group_source] OPTIONS

Configuration parameters of each group source section are described below.

Specify the external shell command used to resolve a group name into a nodeset, list of nodes or list of nodeset (separated by space characters or by carriage returns). The variable $GROUP is replaced before executing the command. Either map or mapall must be defined.
Optional external shell command that should return all group-to-nodes mappings for this group source in a single call, one group: nodes line per group. Useful when the source can dump all its groups at once (e.g. with sinfo or ansible-inventory --list), as a single call then serves both map and list queries from the cache. mapall output takes precedence over the list upcall. If map is also defined, it is used as a fallback for groups missing from the mapall output (or all groups if caching is disabled); otherwise, missing groups resolve to an empty nodeset. The first : on each line separates the group name from the nodes, so group names must be single words without :. Duplicate group lines are merged. A malformed output line makes the whole mapall call fail (nothing is cached and the next query retries), and a failing mapall command does not fall back to map.
Optional external shell command that should return a nodeset, list of nodes or list of nodeset of all nodes for this group source. If not specified, the library will try to resolve all nodes by using the list external command in the same group source followed by map for each group.
Optional external shell command that should return the list of all groups for this group source (separated by space characters or by carriage returns). Not used when mapall is defined, unless caching is disabled.
Optional external shell command used to find the group(s) of a single node. The variable $NODE is replaced beforehand. If this upcall is not specified, the reverse operation is computed in memory by the library from the list and map external calls. Also, if the number of nodes to reverse is greater than the number of available groups, the reverse external command is avoided automatically.
Number of seconds each upcall result is kept in cache, in memory only. Default is 3600 seconds. This is useful only for daemons using nodegroups.

When the library executes a group source external shell command, the current working directory is set beforehand to the corresponding confdir. This allows the use of relative paths for third party files in the command. The command's standard input is connected to /dev/null.

In addition to context-dependent $GROUP and $NODE variables described above, the two following variables are always available and also replaced before executing shell commands:

  • $CFGDIR is replaced by groups.conf highest priority base directory path
  • $SOURCE is replaced by current source name

Each external command might return a non-zero return code when the operation is not doable. But if the call returns zero, for instance, for a non-existing group, the user will not receive any error when trying to resolve such an unknown group. The desired behavior is up to the system administrator.

RESOURCE USAGE

All external command results are cached in memory to avoid multiple calls. Each result is kept for a limited amount of time. See cache_time option to tune this behavior.

EXAMPLES

Simple configuration file for local groups and Slurm partitions binding.

groups.conf

[Main]
default: local
confdir: /etc/clustershell/groups.conf.d $CFGDIR/groups.conf.d
autodir: /etc/clustershell/groups.d $CFGDIR/groups.d
[local]
map: sed -n 's/^$GROUP:\(.*\)/\1/p' /etc/clustershell/groups
list: sed -n 's/^\([0-9A-Za-z_-]*\):.*/\1/p' /etc/clustershell/groups
[slurm]
map: sinfo -h -o "%N" -p $GROUP
all: sinfo -h -o "%N"
list: sinfo -h -o "%P"
reverse: sinfo -h -N -o "%P" -n $NODE

FILES

$CLUSTERSHELL_CFGDIR/groups.conf (defaults to /etc/clustershell/groups.conf)
Global node groups configuration file.
$CLUSTERSHELL_CFGDIR/groups.conf.d/ (defaults to /etc/clustershell/groups.conf.d/)
Recommended directory for additional configuration files.
$CLUSTERSHELL_CFGDIR/groups.d/ (defaults to /etc/clustershell/groups.d/)
Recommended directory for autodir, where native group definition files (.yaml files) are found.
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/clustershell/groups.conf
Main user groups.conf configuration file. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not defined, $HOME/.config/clustershell/groups.conf is used instead.
{sys.prefix}/etc/clustershell/groups.conf
Configuration file when ClusterShell is installed in a Python virtual environment.
$HOME/.local/etc/clustershell/groups.conf
Local groups.conf user configuration file (default installation for pip --user)

SEE ALSO

clubak(1), cluset(1), clush(1), nodeset(1)

https://clustershell.readthedocs.io/

AUTHOR

Stephane Thiell

COPYRIGHT

GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or later (LGPLv2.1+)

2026-07-16 1.10.1