分布式计算
Distributed.addprocs
— Function.
addprocs(manager::ClusterManager; kwargs...) -> List of process identifiers
Launches worker processes via the specified cluster manager.
For example, Beowulf clusters are supported via a custom cluster manager implemented in the package ClusterManagers.jl
.
The number of seconds a newly launched worker waits for connection establishment from the master can be specified via variable JULIA_WORKER_TIMEOUT
in the worker process's environment. Relevant only when using TCP/IP as transport.
addprocs(machines; tunnel=false, sshflags=``, max_parallel=10, kwargs...) -> List of process identifiers
Add processes on remote machines via SSH. Requires julia
to be installed in the same location on each node, or to be available via a shared file system.
machines
is a vector of machine specifications. Workers are started for each specification.
A machine specification is either a string machine_spec
or a tuple - (machine_spec, count)
.
machine_spec
is a string of the form [user@]host[:port] [bind_addr[:port]]
. user
defaults to current user, port
to the standard ssh port. If [bind_addr[:port]]
is specified, other workers will connect to this worker at the specified bind_addr
and port
.
count
is the number of workers to be launched on the specified host. If specified as :auto
it will launch as many workers as the number of CPU threads on the specific host.
Keyword arguments:
tunnel
: iftrue
then SSH tunneling will be used to connect to the worker from the master process. Default isfalse
.sshflags
: specifies additional ssh options, e.g.sshflags=
-i /home/foo/bar.pem</code>
max_parallel
: specifies the maximum number of workers connected to in parallel at a host. Defaults to 10.dir
: specifies the working directory on the workers. Defaults to the host's current directory (as found bypwd()
)enable_threaded_blas
: iftrue
then BLAS will run on multiple threads in added processes. Default isfalse
.exename
: name of thejulia
executable. Defaults to"$(Sys.BINDIR)/julia"
or"$(Sys.BINDIR)/julia-debug"
as the case may be.exeflags
: additional flags passed to the worker processes.topology
: Specifies how the workers connect to each other. Sending a message between unconnected workers results in an error.topology=:all_to_all
: All processes are connected to each other. The default.topology=:master_worker
: Only the driver process, i.e.pid
1 connects to the workers. The workers do not connect to each other.topology=:custom
: Thelaunch
method of the cluster manager specifies the connection topology via fieldsident
andconnect_idents
inWorkerConfig
. A worker with a cluster manager identityident
will connect to all workers specified inconnect_idents
.
lazy
: Applicable only withtopology=:all_to_all
. Iftrue
, worker-worker connections are setup lazily, i.e. they are setup at the first instance of a remote call between workers. Default is true.
Environment variables :
If the master process fails to establish a connection with a newly launched worker within 60.0 seconds, the worker treats it as a fatal situation and terminates. This timeout can be controlled via environment variable JULIA_WORKER_TIMEOUT
. The value of JULIA_WORKER_TIMEOUT
on the master process specifies the number of seconds a newly launched worker waits for connection establishment.
addprocs(; kwargs...) -> List of process identifiers
Equivalent to addprocs(Sys.CPU_THREADS; kwargs…)
Note that workers do not run a .julia/config/startup.jl
startup script, nor do they synchronize their global state (such as global variables, new method definitions, and loaded modules) with any of the other running processes.
addprocs(np::Integer; restrict=true, kwargs...) -> List of process identifiers
Launches workers using the in-built LocalManager
which only launches workers on the local host. This can be used to take advantage of multiple cores. addprocs(4)
will add 4 processes on the local machine. If restrict
is true
, binding is restricted to 127.0.0.1
. Keyword args dir
, exename
, exeflags
, topology
, lazy
and enable_threaded_blas
have the same effect as documented for addprocs(machines)
.
Distributed.nprocs
— Function.
nprocs()
Get the number of available processes.
Examples
julia> nprocs()
3
julia> workers()
5-element Array{Int64,1}:
2
3
Distributed.nworkers
— Function.
nworkers()
Get the number of available worker processes. This is one less than nprocs()
. Equal to nprocs()
if nprocs() == 1
.
Examples
$ julia -p 5
julia> nprocs()
6
julia> nworkers()
5
Distributed.procs
— Method.
procs()
Return a list of all process identifiers, including pid 1 (which is not included by workers()
).
Examples
$ julia -p 5
julia> procs()
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
3
Distributed.procs
— Method.
procs(pid::Integer)
Return a list of all process identifiers on the same physical node. Specifically all workers bound to the same ip-address as pid
are returned.
Distributed.workers
— Function.
workers()
Return a list of all worker process identifiers.
Examples
$ julia -p 5
julia> workers()
2-element Array{Int64,1}:
2
3
Distributed.rmprocs
— Function.
rmprocs(pids...; waitfor=typemax(Int))
Remove the specified workers. Note that only process 1 can add or remove workers.
Argument waitfor
specifies how long to wait for the workers to shut down:
- If unspecified,
rmprocs
will wait until all requested pids
are removed. - An
ErrorException
is raised if all workers cannot be terminated before the requested waitfor
seconds. - With a
waitfor
value of 0, the call returns immediately with the workers scheduled for removal in a different task. The scheduled Task
object is returned. The user should call wait
on the task before invoking any other parallel calls.Examples
$ julia -p 5
julia> t = rmprocs(2, 3, waitfor=0)
Task (runnable) @0x0000000107c718d0
julia> wait(t)
julia> workers()
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
4
5
6
Distributed.interrupt
— Function.
interrupt(pids::Integer...)
Interrupt the current executing task on the specified workers. This is equivalent to pressing Ctrl-C on the local machine. If no arguments are given, all workers are interrupted.
interrupt(pids::AbstractVector=workers())
Interrupt the current executing task on the specified workers. This is equivalent to pressing Ctrl-C on the local machine. If no arguments are given, all workers are interrupted.
Distributed.myid
— Function.
myid()
Get the id of the current process.
Examples
julia> myid()
1
julia> remotecall_fetch(() -> myid(), 4)
4
Distributed.pmap
— Function.
pmap(f, [::AbstractWorkerPool], c...; distributed=true, batch_size=1, on_error=nothing, retry_delays=[], retry_check=nothing) -> collection
Transform collection c
by applying f
to each element using available workers and tasks.
For multiple collection arguments, apply f
elementwise.
Note that f
must be made available to all worker processes; see Code Availability and Loading Packages for details.
If a worker pool is not specified, all available workers, i.e., the default worker pool is used.
By default, pmap
distributes the computation over all specified workers. To use only the local process and distribute over tasks, specify distributed=false
. This is equivalent to using asyncmap
. For example, pmap(f, c; distributed=false)
is equivalent to asyncmap(f,c; ntasks=()->nworkers())
pmap
can also use a mix of processes and tasks via the batch_size
argument. For batch sizes greater than 1, the collection is processed in multiple batches, each of length batch_size
or less. A batch is sent as a single request to a free worker, where a local asyncmap
processes elements from the batch using multiple concurrent tasks.
Any error stops pmap
from processing the remainder of the collection. To override this behavior you can specify an error handling function via argument on_error
which takes in a single argument, i.e., the exception. The function can stop the processing by rethrowing the error, or, to continue, return any value which is then returned inline with the results to the caller.
Consider the following two examples. The first one returns the exception object inline, the second a 0 in place of any exception:
julia> pmap(x->iseven(x) ? error("foo") : x, 1:4; on_error=identity)
4-element Array{Any,1}:
1
ErrorException("foo")
3
ErrorException("foo")
julia> pmap(x->iseven(x) ? error("foo") : x, 1:4; on_error=ex->0)
4-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
0
3
0
Errors can also be handled by retrying failed computations. Keyword arguments retry_delays
and retry_check
are passed through to retry
as keyword arguments delays
and check
respectively. If batching is specified, and an entire batch fails, all items in the batch are retried.
Note that if both on_error
and retry_delays
are specified, the on_error
hook is called before retrying. If on_error
does not throw (or rethrow) an exception, the element will not be retried.
Example: On errors, retry f
on an element a maximum of 3 times without any delay between retries.
pmap(f, c; retry_delays = zeros(3))
Example: Retry f
only if the exception is not of type InexactError
, with exponentially increasing delays up to 3 times. Return a NaN
in place for all InexactError
occurrences.
pmap(f, c; on_error = e->(isa(e, InexactError) ? NaN : rethrow(e)), retry_delays = ExponentialBackOff(n = 3))
Distributed.RemoteException
— Type.
RemoteException(captured)
Exceptions on remote computations are captured and rethrown locally. A RemoteException
wraps the pid
of the worker and a captured exception. A CapturedException
captures the remote exception and a serializable form of the call stack when the exception was raised.
Distributed.Future
— Type.
Future(pid::Integer=myid())
Create a Future
on process pid
. The default pid
is the current process.
Distributed.RemoteChannel
— Type.
RemoteChannel(pid::Integer=myid())
Make a reference to a Channel{Any}(1)
on process pid
. The default pid
is the current process.
RemoteChannel(f::Function, pid::Integer=myid())
Create references to remote channels of a specific size and type. f
is a function that when executed on pid
must return an implementation of an AbstractChannel
.
For example, RemoteChannel(()->Channel{Int}(10), pid)
, will return a reference to a channel of type Int
and size 10 on pid
.
The default pid
is the current process.
Base.wait
— Function.
wait(r::Future)
Wait for a value to become available for the specified Future
.
wait(r::RemoteChannel, args...)
Wait for a value to become available on the specified RemoteChannel
.
wait([x])
Block the current task until some event occurs, depending on the type of the argument:
Channel
: Wait for a value to be appended to the channel.Condition
: Wait for notify
on a condition.Process
: Wait for a process or process chain to exit. The exitcode
field of a process can be used to determine success or failure.Task
: Wait for a Task
to finish. If the task fails with an exception, the exception is propagated (re-thrown in the task that called wait
).RawFD
: Wait for changes on a file descriptor (see the FileWatching
package).If no argument is passed, the task blocks for an undefined period. A task can only be restarted by an explicit call to schedule
or yieldto
.
Often wait
is called within a while
loop to ensure a waited-for condition is met before proceeding.
Base.fetch
— Method.
fetch(x)
Waits and fetches a value from x
depending on the type of x
:
Future
: Wait for and get the value of a Future
. The fetched value is cached locally. Further calls to fetch
on the same reference return the cached value. If the remote value is an exception, throws a RemoteException
which captures the remote exception and backtrace.RemoteChannel
: Wait for and get the value of a remote reference. Exceptions raised are same as for a Future
.Does not remove the item fetched.
Distributed.remotecall
— Method.
remotecall(f, id::Integer, args...; kwargs...) -> Future
Call a function f
asynchronously on the given arguments on the specified process. Return a Future
. Keyword arguments, if any, are passed through to f
.
Distributed.remotecall_wait
— Method.
remotecall_wait(f, id::Integer, args...; kwargs...)
Perform a faster wait(remotecall(…))
in one message on the Worker
specified by worker id id
. Keyword arguments, if any, are passed through to f
.
See also wait
and remotecall
.
Distributed.remotecall_fetch
— Method.
remotecall_fetch(f, id::Integer, args...; kwargs...)
Perform fetch(remotecall(…))
in one message. Keyword arguments, if any, are passed through to f
. Any remote exceptions are captured in a RemoteException
and thrown.
See also fetch
and remotecall
.
Examples
$ julia -p 2
julia> remotecall_fetch(sqrt, 2, 4)
2.0
julia> remotecall_fetch(sqrt, 2, -4)
ERROR: On worker 2:
DomainError with -4.0:
sqrt will only return a complex result if called with a complex argument. Try sqrt(Complex(x)).
...
Distributed.remote_do
— Method.
remote_do(f, id::Integer, args...; kwargs...) -> nothing
Executes f
on worker id
asynchronously. Unlike remotecall
, it does not store the result of computation, nor is there a way to wait for its completion.
A successful invocation indicates that the request has been accepted for execution on the remote node.
While consecutive remotecall
s to the same worker are serialized in the order they are invoked, the order of executions on the remote worker is undetermined. For example, remote_do(f1, 2); remotecall(f2, 2); remote_do(f3, 2)
will serialize the call to f1
, followed by f2
and f3
in that order. However, it is not guaranteed that f1
is executed before f3
on worker 2.
Any exceptions thrown by f
are printed to stderr
on the remote worker.
Keyword arguments, if any, are passed through to f
.
Base.put!
— Method.
put!(rr::RemoteChannel, args...)
Store a set of values to the RemoteChannel
. If the channel is full, blocks until space is available. Return the first argument.
Base.put!
— Method.
put!(rr::Future, v)
Store a value to a Future
rr
. Future
s are write-once remote references. A put!
on an already set Future
throws an Exception
. All asynchronous remote calls return Future
s and set the value to the return value of the call upon completion.
Base.take!
— Method.
take!(rr::RemoteChannel, args...)
Fetch value(s) from a RemoteChannel
rr
, removing the value(s) in the process.
Base.isready
— Method.
isready(rr::RemoteChannel, args...)
Determine whether a RemoteChannel
has a value stored to it. Note that this function can cause race conditions, since by the time you receive its result it may no longer be true. However, it can be safely used on a Future
since they are assigned only once.
Base.isready
— Method.
isready(rr::Future)
Determine whether a Future
has a value stored to it.
If the argument Future
is owned by a different node, this call will block to wait for the answer. It is recommended to wait for rr
in a separate task instead or to use a local Channel
as a proxy:
c = Channel(1)
@async put!(c, remotecall_fetch(long_computation, p))
isready(c) # will not block
Distributed.WorkerPool
— Type.
WorkerPool(workers::Vector{Int})
Create a WorkerPool
from a vector of worker ids.
Examples
$ julia -p 3
julia> WorkerPool([2, 3])
WorkerPool(Channel{Int64}(sz_max:9223372036854775807,sz_curr:2), Set([2, 3]), RemoteChannel{Channel{Any}}(1, 1, 6))
Distributed.CachingPool
— Type.
CachingPool(workers::Vector{Int})
An implementation of an AbstractWorkerPool
. remote
, remotecall_fetch
, pmap
(and other remote calls which execute functions remotely) benefit from caching the serialized/deserialized functions on the worker nodes, especially closures (which may capture large amounts of data).
The remote cache is maintained for the lifetime of the returned CachingPool
object. To clear the cache earlier, use clear!(pool)
.
For global variables, only the bindings are captured in a closure, not the data. let
blocks can be used to capture global data.
Examples
const foo = rand(10^8);
wp = CachingPool(workers())
let foo = foo
pmap(wp, i -> sum(foo) + i, 1:100);
end
The above would transfer foo
only once to each worker.
Distributed.default_worker_pool
— Function.
default_worker_pool()
WorkerPool
containing idle workers
- used by remote(f)
and pmap
(by default).
Examples
$ julia -p 3
julia> default_worker_pool()
WorkerPool(Channel{Int64}(sz_max:9223372036854775807,sz_curr:3), Set([4, 2, 3]), RemoteChannel{Channel{Any}}(1, 1, 4))
Distributed.clear!
— Method.
clear!(pool::CachingPool) -> pool
Removes all cached functions from all participating workers.
Distributed.remote
— Function.
remote([p::AbstractWorkerPool], f) -> Function
Return an anonymous function that executes function f
on an available worker (drawn from WorkerPool
p
if provided) using remotecall_fetch
.
Distributed.remotecall
— Method.
remotecall(f, pool::AbstractWorkerPool, args...; kwargs...) -> Future
WorkerPool
variant of remotecall(f, pid, ….)
. Wait for and take a free worker from pool
and perform a remotecall
on it.
Examples
$ julia -p 3
julia> wp = WorkerPool([2, 3]);
julia> A = rand(3000);
julia> f = remotecall(maximum, wp, A)
Future(2, 1, 6, nothing)
In this example, the task ran on pid 2, called from pid 1.
Distributed.remotecall_wait
— Method.
remotecall_wait(f, pool::AbstractWorkerPool, args...; kwargs...) -> Future
WorkerPool
variant of remotecall_wait(f, pid, ….)
. Wait for and take a free worker from pool
and perform a remotecall_wait
on it.
Examples
$ julia -p 3
julia> wp = WorkerPool([2, 3]);
julia> A = rand(3000);
julia> f = remotecall_wait(maximum, wp, A)
Future(3, 1, 9, nothing)
julia> fetch(f)
0.9995177101692958
Distributed.remotecall_fetch
— Method.
remotecall_fetch(f, pool::AbstractWorkerPool, args...; kwargs...) -> result
WorkerPool
variant of remotecall_fetch(f, pid, ….)
. Waits for and takes a free worker from pool
and performs a remotecall_fetch
on it.
Examples
$ julia -p 3
julia> wp = WorkerPool([2, 3]);
julia> A = rand(3000);
julia> remotecall_fetch(maximum, wp, A)
0.9995177101692958
Distributed.remote_do
— Method.
remote_do(f, pool::AbstractWorkerPool, args...; kwargs...) -> nothing
WorkerPool
variant of remote_do(f, pid, ….)
. Wait for and take a free worker from pool
and perform a remote_do
on it.
Base.timedwait
— Function.
timedwait(testcb::Function, secs::Float64; pollint::Float64=0.1)
Waits until testcb
returns true
or for secs
seconds, whichever is earlier. testcb
is polled every pollint
seconds.
Distributed.@spawn
— Macro.
@spawn
Create a closure around an expression and run it on an automatically-chosen process, returning a Future
to the result.
Examples
julia> addprocs(3);
julia> f = @spawn myid()
Future(2, 1, 5, nothing)
julia> fetch(f)
2
julia> f = @spawn myid()
Future(3, 1, 7, nothing)
julia> fetch(f)
3
Distributed.@spawnat
— Macro.
@spawnat
Create a closure around an expression and run the closure asynchronously on process p
. Return a Future
to the result. Accepts two arguments, p
and an expression.
Examples
julia> addprocs(1);
julia> f = @spawnat 2 myid()
Future(2, 1, 3, nothing)
julia> fetch(f)
2
Distributed.@fetch
— Macro.
@fetch
Equivalent to fetch(@spawn expr)
. See fetch
and @spawn
.
Examples
julia> addprocs(3);
julia> @fetch myid()
2
julia> @fetch myid()
3
julia> @fetch myid()
4
julia> @fetch myid()
2
Distributed.@fetchfrom
— Macro.
@fetchfrom
Equivalent to fetch(@spawnat p expr)
. See fetch
and @spawnat
.
Examples
julia> addprocs(3);
julia> @fetchfrom 2 myid()
2
julia> @fetchfrom 4 myid()
4
Base.@async
— Macro.
@async
Wrap an expression in a Task
and add it to the local machine's scheduler queue.
Base.@sync
— Macro.
@sync
Wait until all lexically-enclosed uses of @async
, @spawn
, @spawnat
and @distributed
are complete. All exceptions thrown by enclosed async operations are collected and thrown as a CompositeException
.
Distributed.@distributed
— Macro.
@distributed
A distributed memory, parallel for loop of the form :
@distributed [reducer] for var = range
body
end
The specified range is partitioned and locally executed across all workers. In case an optional reducer function is specified, @distributed
performs local reductions on each worker with a final reduction on the calling process.
Note that without a reducer function, @distributed
executes asynchronously, i.e. it spawns independent tasks on all available workers and returns immediately without waiting for completion. To wait for completion, prefix the call with @sync
, like :
@sync @distributed for var = range
body
end
Distributed.@everywhere
— Macro.
@everywhere [procs()] expr
Execute an expression under Main
on all procs
. Errors on any of the processes are collected into a CompositeException
and thrown. For example:
@everywhere bar = 1
will define Main.bar
on all processes.
Unlike @spawn
and @spawnat
, @everywhere
does not capture any local variables. Instead, local variables can be broadcast using interpolation:
foo = 1
@everywhere bar = $foo
The optional argument procs
allows specifying a subset of all processes to have execute the expression.
Equivalent to calling remotecall_eval(Main, procs, expr)
.
Distributed.clear!
— Method.
clear!(syms, pids=workers(); mod=Main)
Clears global bindings in modules by initializing them to nothing
. syms
should be of type Symbol
or a collection of Symbol
s . pids
and mod
identify the processes and the module in which global variables are to be reinitialized. Only those names found to be defined under mod
are cleared.
An exception is raised if a global constant is requested to be cleared.
Distributed.remoteref_id
— Function.
remoteref_id(r::AbstractRemoteRef) -> RRID
Future
s and RemoteChannel
s are identified by fields:
where
- refers to the node where the underlying object/storage referred to by the reference actually exists.
whence
- refers to the node the remote reference was created from. Note that this is different from the node where the underlying object referred to actually exists. For example calling RemoteChannel(2)
from the master process would result in a where
value of 2 and a whence
value of 1.
id
is unique across all references created from the worker specified by whence
.
Taken together, whence
and id
uniquely identify a reference across all workers.
remoteref_id
is a low-level API which returns a RRID
object that wraps whence
and id
values of a remote reference.
Distributed.channel_from_id
— Function.
channel_from_id(id) -> c
A low-level API which returns the backing AbstractChannel
for an id
returned by remoteref_id
. The call is valid only on the node where the backing channel exists.
Distributed.worker_id_from_socket
— Function.
worker_id_from_socket(s) -> pid
A low-level API which, given a IO
connection or a Worker
, returns the pid
of the worker it is connected to. This is useful when writing custom serialize
methods for a type, which optimizes the data written out depending on the receiving process id.
Distributed.cluster_cookie
— Method.
cluster_cookie() -> cookie
Return the cluster cookie.
Distributed.cluster_cookie
— Method.
cluster_cookie(cookie) -> cookie
Set the passed cookie as the cluster cookie, then returns it.
集群管理接口
This interface provides a mechanism to launch and manage Julia workers on different cluster environments. There are two types of managers present in Base: LocalManager
, for launching additional workers on the same host, and SSHManager
, for launching on remote hosts via ssh
. TCP/IP sockets are used to connect and transport messages between processes. It is possible for Cluster Managers to provide a different transport.
Distributed.launch
— Function.
launch(manager::ClusterManager, params::Dict, launched::Array, launch_ntfy::Condition)
Implemented by cluster managers. For every Julia worker launched by this function, it should append a WorkerConfig
entry to launched
and notify launch_ntfy
. The function MUST exit once all workers, requested by manager
have been launched. params
is a dictionary of all keyword arguments addprocs
was called with.
Distributed.manage
— Function.
manage(manager::ClusterManager, id::Integer, config::WorkerConfig. op::Symbol)
Implemented by cluster managers. It is called on the master process, during a worker's lifetime, with appropriate op
values:
- with
:register
/:deregister
when a worker is added / removed from the Julia worker pool. - with
:interrupt
when interrupt(workers)
is called. The ClusterManager
should signal the appropriate worker with an interrupt signal. - with
:finalize
for cleanup purposes.
Base.kill
— Method.
kill(manager::ClusterManager, pid::Int, config::WorkerConfig)
Implemented by cluster managers. It is called on the master process, by rmprocs
. It should cause the remote worker specified by pid
to exit. kill(manager::ClusterManager…..)
executes a remote exit()
on pid
.
Sockets.connect
— Method.
connect(manager::ClusterManager, pid::Int, config::WorkerConfig) -> (instrm::IO, outstrm::IO)
Implemented by cluster managers using custom transports. It should establish a logical connection to worker with id pid
, specified by config
and return a pair of IO
objects. Messages from pid
to current process will be read off instrm
, while messages to be sent to pid
will be written to outstrm
. The custom transport implementation must ensure that messages are delivered and received completely and in order. connect(manager::ClusterManager…..)
sets up TCP/IP socket connections in-between workers.
Distributed.init_worker
— Function.
init_worker(cookie::AbstractString, manager::ClusterManager=DefaultClusterManager())
Called by cluster managers implementing custom transports. It initializes a newly launched process as a worker. Command line argument —worker[=<cookie>]
has the effect of initializing a process as a worker using TCP/IP sockets for transport. cookie
is a cluster_cookie
.
Distributed.start_worker
— Function.
start_worker([out::IO=stdout], cookie::AbstractString=readline(stdin))
start_worker
is an internal function which is the default entry point for worker processes connecting via TCP/IP. It sets up the process as a Julia cluster worker.
host:port information is written to stream out
(defaults to stdout).
The function closes stdin (after reading the cookie if required), redirects stderr to stdout, listens on a free port (or if specified, the port in the —bind-to
command line option) and schedules tasks to process incoming TCP connections and requests.
It does not return.
Distributed.process_messages
— Function.
process_messages(r_stream::IO, w_stream::IO, incoming::Bool=true)
Called by cluster managers using custom transports. It should be called when the custom transport implementation receives the first message from a remote worker. The custom transport must manage a logical connection to the remote worker and provide two IO
objects, one for incoming messages and the other for messages addressed to the remote worker. If incoming
is true
, the remote peer initiated the connection. Whichever of the pair initiates the connection sends the cluster cookie and its Julia version number to perform the authentication handshake.
See also cluster_cookie
.