DMTCP: Distributed MultiThreaded CheckPointing

DMTCP (Distributed MultiThreaded Checkpointing) is a tool to transparently checkpointing the state of an arbitrary group of programs spread across many machines and connected by sockets. It does not modify the user's program nor the operating system.

For further information, try the DMTCP Sourceforge project page

The dmtcp manpage contains an overview of commands and usage. Similar information can also be found in here (slightly outdated).

The latest stable version of DMTCP can be obtained through the sourceforge.net downloads page. Including:

• Binary .deb package for GNU/Linux 32 bit x86 architectures: dmtcp_1.03-r302_i386.deb (July 7, 2009)
• Binary .deb package for GNU/Linux 64 bit x86_64 architectures: dmtcp_1.03-r302_amd64.deb (July 7, 2009)
• Source code: dmtcp_1.03-r302.tar.gz (July 7, 2009)

To obtain the most recent (possibly unstable) source from subversion, run the following command:

• svn co https://dmtcp.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/dmtcp dmtcp

DMTCP is completely transparent and can checkpoint unmodified Linux binaries. However, if you wish to call DMTCP from within your checkpointed program, we provide an optional programming interface called DMTCP Aware. To use DMTCP Aware:

• Add dmtcpaware.h and dmtcpware.c (or libdmtcpaware.a) to your project. These files can be found in the /usr/lib/dmtcp/ directory if you are using a binary distribution or in the .../dmtcpaware/ directory of the source distribution.
• Include dmtcpaware.h from your code. You should now have access to the DMTCP Aware API.
• Documentation of the DMTCP Aware API functions can be found here. To test if your program is running under dmtcp_checkpoint use dmtcpIsEnabled(). Note that if your program is not running under DMTCP, dmtcpIsEnabled() will return false, and all other API functions will return -128 or NULL and have no effect.

• DMTCP: Transparent Checkpointing for Cluster Computations and the Desktop.
  Jason Ansel, Kapil Arya, and Gene Cooperman.
  23rd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'09).
  Rome, Italy. May, 2009. Slides. Bibtex.
  

• Transparent User-Level Checkpointing for the Native POSIX Thread Library for Linux.
  Michael Rieker, Jason Ansel, and Gene Cooperman.
  The 2006 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'06).
  Las Vegas, NV. Jun, 2006. Bibtex.

DMTCP and its standalone single-process component MTCP (MultiThreaded CheckPointing) are currently maintained by Jason Ansel, Kapil Arya, Gene Cooperman, Artem Polyakov. Mike Rieker, Praveen Solanki, and Ana Maria Visan. The list of active developers continues to evolve.