How it works
============

Your queue
----------

When you submit a task, MyQueue will submit it to your scheduler and add it to
a *queue* file (:file:`~/.myqueue/queue.sqlite3` by default).  Once the tasks
starts running (let's say it has a task-id ``1234``), it will write a status
file called ``1234-0`` in your ``.myqueue/`` folder.  When the tasks stops
running, it will write a file called ``1234-1`` if it finished successfully
and ``1234-2`` if it failed.  MyQueue will remove the status files and update
your queue with information about timing and possible errors.

The processing of the status files happens whenever you interact with MyQueue
on the command-line or every 10 minutes when the MyQueue daemon wakes up.


.. _daemon process:

The daemon background process
-----------------------------

The daemon process wakes up every ten minutes to check if any tasks need to be
resubmitted, held or released (see :meth:`~myqueue.queue.Queue.kick`).
Notification emails will also be sent.  It will write its output to
``.myqueue/daemon.out``.

How does the daemon get started?  Whenever the time stamp of the
``daemon-<username>.out`` file is older that 2 hours or the file is missing,
the *mq* command will start the daemon process. You can also use the
:ref:`daemon <daemon>` sub-command to explicitely *start* or *stop* the daemon
(and check *status*)::

    $ mq daemon {start,stop,status} [folder]


More than one configuration file
--------------------------------

If you have several projects and they need different scheduler configuration,
then you can use the :ref:`init <init>` command::

    $ mkdir project2
    $ cd project2
    $ mq init
    $ ls .myqueue/
    config.py

You now have a ``project2/.myqueue/`` folder that contains a copy of your main
configuration file (``~/.myqueue/config.py``) that you can edit.  All tasks
inside the ``project2/`` folder will now use ``project2/.myqueue/`` for
storing your queue and configuration.