Command Line Interface

After installing the mahos package, a command named mahos is installed. This command serves as a command line interface (CLI) to use mahos. The mahos CLI provides several sub-commands described below.

Shell completion

The mahos CLI supports shell completion via argcomplete for bash and zsh, which is enabled by:

eval "$(register-python-argcomplete mahos)"

To enable persistently, add the same line to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc. If you are using Git Bash on Windows, you need to add export ARGCOMPLETE_USE_TEMPFILES=1 too. See here for details.

Node operations

Common arguments

There are common arguments for node operation commands.

-c [config file]

To operate on MAHOS nodes, you have to prepare toml-based configuration file. The -c option specifies the path to the config file. Defaults to conf.toml.

-H [hostname]

A CLI command usually targets a node. The full name of the node consists of a hostname and nodename. The -H option specifies the hostname part. Defaults to real hostname (platform.uname().node) if it is in the config file, or localhost.

mahos run

mahos run [nodename] starts a mahos node.

If the node is InstrumentServer, you can specify Instrument to include / exclude using -i or -e arguments.

mahos launch

mahos launch [nodenames] starts all the nodes (or specified nodes) pertaining to single host.

mahos launch -e [nodenames-to-exclude] starts all the nodes excluding specified names.

If a node named log (the recommended name for a LogBroker node) is defined to run on the host and is already up, it is automatically excluded.

mahos log

mahos log [nodename=log] subscribes to a LogBroker to print logs on the console.

If the specified LogBroker node is configured to run on the same host and is not up, this command automatically starts the node.

mahos ls

mahos ls prints the list of defined nodes in the config file.

mahos ls -i enables listing of Instruments and InstrumentOverlays in InstrumentServers.

mahos graph

mahos graph visualizes the config file as a graph.

Add option -o [filename] to save to a file.

mahos echo

mahos echo -t [topicname] [nodename] subscribes to a topic and prints published messages.

mahos shell

mahos shell [nodenames] starts an IPython shell with clients for the nodes.

A bound variable cli holds instances of the clients. For each client, client.M is the message module that may be required to invoke client APIs.

Data operations

mahos data ls

mahos data ls [filenames] prints the list of attributes and types in data files.

mahos data note

mahos data note [filenames] prints (or amends) the note attribute in data files.

Add option -a [new note string] to amend the note in the files.

mahos data print

mahos data print [filenames] -k [keys=[params]] prints the attributes in data files.

mahos data plot

mahos data plot [subcommand] plots the data inside data files.

mahos plot is a shorthand of mahos data plot.