jobd

jobd is a simple job queue daemon with persistent queue storage, written in Node.JS. It uses a MySQL table as a storage backend (for queue input and output).

Currently, MySQL is the only supported storage type, but other backends might be easily supported.

It is by design that jobd never adds nor deletes jobs from storage. It only reads (when a certain request arrives) and updates them (during execution, when job status changes). Succeeded or failed, your jobs are never lost.

jobd consists of 2 parts:

1. jobd is a "worker" daemon that reads jobs from the database, enqueues and launches them. There may be multiple instances of jobd running on multiple hosts. Each jobd instance may have unlimited number of queues (called "targets"), each with its own concurrency limit.

2. jobd-master is a "master" or "cetral" daemon that simplifies control over many jobd instances. There should be only one instance of jobd-master running. jobd-master is not required for jobd workers to work (they can work without it), but it's very very useful.

In addition, there is a command line utility called jobctl.

Originally, jobd was created as a saner alternative to Gearman. It's been used in production with a large PHP web application on multiple servers for quite some time already, and proven to be stable and efficient.

Table of Contents

• How it works
• Protocol
  • Request Message
    • jobd request types
    • jobd-master request types
  • Response Message
  • Ping and Pong Messages
• Implementation example
• Installation
• Usage
  • systemd
  • supervisor
  • Other notes
• Configuration
  • jobd
  • jobd-master
  • jobctl
• MySQL setup
• Clients
  • PHP
• TODO
• License

How it works

To be written.

Protocol

By default, jobd and jobd-master listen on TCP ports 7080 and 7081 respectively, ports can be changed in a config.

jobd has been created with an assumption that it'll be used in more-or-less trusted environments (LAN, or, at least, servers within one data center) so no encryption nor authentication mechanisms have been implemented. All traffic between jobd and clients flow in plain text. You can protect a jobd instance with a password though, so at least basic password-based authorization is supported.

Both daemons receive and send Messages. Each message is followed by EOT (0x4) byte which indicates an end of a message. Clients may send and receive multiple messages over a single connection. Usually, it's the client who must close the connection, when it's not needed anymore. A server, however, may close the connection in some situations (invalid password, server error, etc).

Messages are encoded as JSON arrays with at least one item, representing the message type:

[TYPE]

If a message of specific type has some data, it's placed as a second item:

[TYPE, DATA]

Type of TYPE is integer. Supported types are:

• 0: Request
• 1: Response
• 2: Ping
• 3: Pong

Request Message

DATA is a JSON object with following keys:

• no (required, int) — unique (per connection) request number. Clients can start counting request numbers from one (1) or from any other random number. Each subsequent request should increment this number by 1. Note that zero (0) is reserved.
• type (required, string) — request type. Supported request types for jobd and jobd-master are listed below.
• data (object) — request arguments (if needed): an object, whose keys and values represent argument names and values.
• password (string) — a password, for password-protected instances. Only needed for first request.

Example (w/o trailing EOT):

[0,{no:0,type:'poll',data:{'targets':['target_1','target_2']}}]

Here is the list of supported requests, using type(arguments) notation.

jobd request types

• poll(targets: string[]) — get new tasks for specified targets from database. If targets argument is not specified, get tasks for all serving targets.

• pause(targets: string[]) — pause execution of tasks of specified targets. If targets argument is not specified, pauses all targets.

• continue(targets: string[]) — continue execution of tasks of specified targets. If targets argument is not specified, continues all targets.

• status() — returns status of internal queues and memory usage.

• run-manual(ids: int[]) — enqueue and run jobs with specified IDs and status set to manual, and return results.

• add-target(target: string, concurrency: int) — add target

• remove-target(target: string, concurrency: int) — remove target

• set-target-concurrency(target: string, concurrency: int) — set concurrency of target target.

jobd-master request types

• register-worker(targets: string[]) — used by a jobd instance to register itself with master. You don't need it.

• poke(targets: string[]) — send poll requests to all registered workers that serve specified targets.

• pause(targets: string[]) — send pause(targets) requests to workers serving specified targets. If targets argument is not specified, sends pause() to all workers.

• continue(targets: string[]) — send continue(targets) requests to workers serving specified targets. If targets argument is not specified, sends continue() to all workers.

• status(poll_workers=false: bool) — returns list of registered workers and memory usage. If poll_workers is true, sends status() request to all registered workers and includes their responses.

• run-manual(jobs: {id: int, target: string}[]) — send run-manual requests to registered jobd instances serving specified targets, aggregate an return results.

Response Message

DATA is a JSON object with following keys:

• no (required, int) — no of request this response is related to.
• data (array | object | string | int) — data, if request succeeded.
• error (string) — error message, if request failed.

Example (w/o trailing EOT):

[1,{no:0,data:'ok'}]

Ping and Pong Messages

No DATA.

Example (w/o trailing EOT):

[2]

Implementation example

To be written.

Installation

First, you need Node.JS 14 or newer. See here now to install it using package manager.

Then install jobd using npm:

npm i -g jobd 

Usage

systemd

One of possible ways of launching jobd and jobd-master daemons is via systemd. This repository contains basic examples of jobd.service and jobd-master.service unit files. Note that jobs will be launched as the same user the jobd worker is running, so you might want to change that.

Copy .service file(s) to /etc/systemd/system, then do:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable jobd
systemctl start jobd
# repeat last two steps for jobd-master, if needed

supervisor

If you don't like systemd, supervisor might be an option. Create a configuration file in /etc/supervisor/conf.d with following content:

[program:jobd]
command=/usr/bin/jobd --config /etc/jobd.conf
numprocs=1
directory=/
stdout_logfile=/var/log/jobd-stdout.log
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=nobody
stopsignal=TERM

Then use supervisorctl to start or stop jobd.

Other notes

Don't forget to filter access to jobd and jobd-master ports using your favorite firewall.

Configuration

Configuration files are written in ini format. All available options for both daemons, as well as a command-line utility, are described below. You can copy jobd.conf.example and jobd-master.conf.example and use them as a template instead of writing configs from scratch.

jobd

Default config path is /etc/jobd.conf. Use the --config option to use a different path.

Without section:

• host (required, string) — jobd server hostname
• port (required, int) — jobd server port
• password (string) — password for requests
• always_allow_localhost (boolean, default: false) — when set to 1 or true, allows accepting requests from clients connecting from localhost without password
• master_host (string) — master hostname
• master_port (int) — master port. If hostname or port is omitted, jobd will not connect to master.
• master_reconnect_timeout (int, default: 10) — if connection to master failed, jobd will be constantly trying to reconnect. This option specifies a delay between connection attempts, in seconds.
• log_file (string) — path to a log file
• log_level_file (string, default: warn) — minimum level of logs that are written to the file.
  Allowed values: trace, debug, info, warn, error
• log_level_console (string, default: warn) — minimum level of logs that go to stdout.
• mysql_host (required, string) — database host
• mysql_port (required, int) — database port
• mysql_user (required, string) — database user
• mysql_password (required, string) — database password
• mysql_database (required, string) — database name
• mysql_table (required, string) — table name
• mysql_fetch_limit (int, default: 100) — a number of new jobs to fetch in every request
• launcher (required, string) — a template of shell command that will be launched for every job. {id} will be replaced with job id
• max_output_buffer (int, default: 1048576)

Under the [targets] section, targets are specified. Each target is specified on a separate line in the following format:

{target_name} = {n}

where:

• {target_name} (string) is target name
• {n} (int) is maximum count of simultaneously executing jobs for this target

jobd-master

Default config path is /etc/jobd-master.conf. Use the --config option to use a different path.

• host (required, string)
• port (required, int)
• password (string)
• always_allow_localhost (boolean, default: false)
• ping_interval (int, default: 30) — specifies interval between workers pings.
• poke_throttle_interval (int, default: 0.5)
• log_file (string)
• log_level_file (string, default: warn)
• log_level_console (string, default: warn)

jobctl

Default config path is ~/.jobctl.conf.

• master (boolean) — same as --master.
• host (string) — same as --host.
• port (int) — same as --port.
• password (string)
• log_level (string, default: warn)

MySQL setup

Minimal table scheme:

CREATE TABLE `jobs` (
  `id` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `target` char(16) NOT NULL,
  `time_created` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  `time_started` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
  `time_finished` int(10) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
  `status` enum('waiting','manual','accepted','running','done','ignored') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'waiting',
  `result` enum('ok','fail') DEFAULT NULL,
  `return_code` tinyint(3) UNSIGNED DEFAULT NULL,
  `sig` char(10) DEFAULT NULL,
  `stdout` mediumtext DEFAULT NULL,
  `stderr` mediumtext DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `status_target_idx` (`status`, `target`, `id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

In a real world, you need some additional fields such as job_name or job_data.

For optimization purposes, you can turn target into ENUM. Also, if 16 characters for the target field is not enough for you, change it to fit your needs.

Clients

PHP

php-jobd-client (official)

TODO

• graceful shutdown

License

BSD-2c