CTPU Reference

Overview

Important: The ctpu tool has been deprecated and the tool functionality has been replaced by corresponding gcloud compute tpus commands.

The open source ctpu tool is used to create a flock of compute resources, which consist of a Compute Engine VM and one or more Cloud TPU devices. The tool is pre-installed in your Cloud shell.

You can find documentation and code for ctpu on GitHub.

The ctpu tool uses the following syntax:

ctpu <subcommand> <flags> <subcommand> <subcommand args> 

Following are the subcommands for ctpu:

auth

Description

Set or display authorization(s) for Cloud TPUs.

Usage

ctpu auth <flags> <subcommand> <subcommand args>

Example

ctpu auth list --project="my-project" --zone=us-central1-a
ctpu auth list --project my-project --zone us-central1-a

Subcommands

The ctpu auth command supports the following subcommands:

• add-bigtable - ensure Cloud TPU is authorized for Cloud Bigtable
• add-gcs - ensure Cloud TPU is authorized for Cloud Storage
• list - display Cloud TPU service account authorizations
• commands - list all command names
• flags - describe all known top-level flags
• help - describe subcommands and their syntax

Optional Flags

The following are optional commands for ctpu auth. name | project | zone

delete (rm)

Description

Delete your Compute Engine VM and Cloud TPU.

Usage

ctpu rm <flags>

Example

ctpu rm --zone=us-central1-b

help

Description

List all ctpu subcommands and top level flags.

Usage

ctpu help
ctpu help <subcommand>

Example

ctpu help   // list all ctpu subcommands and top level flags

ctpu help auth   // list all flags that can be used with `ctpu auth`
ctpu help up   // list all flags that can be used with `ctpu up`

list (ls)

Description

List all Compute Engine VMs and Cloud TPU in the specified zone.

Usage

ctpu ls <flags>

Example

ctpu ls --zone=us-central1-b

pause (zz)

Description

Stop the Compute Engine VM, and delete your Cloud TPU. Stop charging for Cloud TPU usage until you run ctpu up.

To ensure that the Cloud TPU is stopped, you must specify the Cloud TPU name and the zone on the command line.

Important: You will still be charged for the disk space consumed by your VM while it is paused.

Usage

ctpu pause <name, zone>

Example

ctpu pause --name=my-tpu --zone=us-central1-a  // pause the named TPU
in the specified zone

print-config (cfg)

Description

Print onscreen the current configuration of the Cloud TPU name, project name, and zone.

Example

ctpu print-config

quota

Description

Display a URL where you can see quotas.

Usage

ctpu quota

Example

ctpu quota
Output: Quotas cannot currently be displayed within ctpu.
To view your quota, open <url>
Request additional quota from <url>

restart

Description

Restarts a Cloud TPU that is still in the RUNNING state (shown in ctpu status), but has stopped running because of a hardware problem. Use gcloud compute tpu start or the START button on the Compute Engine > TPUs page in the Cloud console if the TPU is in the STOPPED state.

restart does not restart a preempted Cloud TPU. You need to run ctpu delete and ctpu up if your Cloud TPU has been preempted.

Usage

ctpu restart <flags>

Example

ctpu restart --zone=us-central1-a

status (st)

Description

Query the GCP APIs (default zone only) to determine the current status of your Cloud TPU and Compute Engine VM.

Important: If your resources are running in a non-default region or zone, you _must_ specify the `--zone` flag.

Usage

ctpu st

Example

ctpu st --zone=us-central1-a
Status message:
  Your cluster is running!
    Compute Engine VM:  RUNNING
    Cloud TPU:     RUNNING 

tpu-locations

Description

List all zones where TPU types are available.

Usage

ctpu tpu-locations

Output

Cloud TPU Locations:
    asia-east1-c
    europe-west4-a
    us-central1-a
    us-central1-b
    us-central1-c

tpu-sizes

Description

List all available TPU sizes in specified zone. Some sizes are available only in certain zones. (default = default zone)

Usage

tpu-sizes <zone>

Example

ctpu tpu-sizes --zone=us-central1-a

up

Description

Bring up a ctpu resource set. The first time you run ctpu up on a project, it takes longer than it will in future runs because it is performing tasks such as SSH key propagation and API turn-up.

• Enables the Compute Engine and Cloud TPU services.
• Creates a Compute Engine VM with the latest stable TensorFlow version pre-installed.
• Assigns a default zone, such as us-central1-b based on your location.
• Passes the name of the Cloud TPU to the Compute Engine VM as an environment variable (TPU_NAME).
• Ensures your Cloud TPU has access to resources it needs from your Google Cloud project, by granting specific IAM roles to your Cloud TPU service account.
• Performs a number of other checks.
• Logs you into your new Compute Engine VM. Your shell prompt changes from username@project to username@tpuname.

You can run ctpu up as often as you like. For example, if you lose the SSH connection to the Compute Engine VM, run ctpu up to restore the connection. You must specify a zone if your Compute Engine is not in the default zone. For example:

$ ctpu up --zone=us-central1-a

Usage

ctpu up <flags>

Example

ctpu up --tpu-size=v2-8 --disk-size-gb=320 --preemptible

Flags

--disk-size-gb
Configure the root volume size of your Compute Engine VM. Value must be an integer. (default = 250)

--dry-run
Do not make changes; print only what would have happened.

--forward-agent
Enable ssh agent forwarding when sshing into the Compute Engine VM. SSH Agent Forwarding enables access to shared repositories (such as GitHub) without having to place private keys on the Compute Engine VM. (default = true)

--forward-ports
Automatically forward useful ports from the Compute Engine VM to your local machine. Ports forwarded are: 6006 (tensorboard), 8888 (jupyter notebooks), 8470 (TPU port), 8466 (TPU profiler port). (default = true)

--gce-image
Override the automatically chosen Compute Engine Image. Use this flag when you are using your own custom images instead of the ones provided with the installed TensorFlow.

--gcp-network
Specify the network in which the Cloud TPU and associated VM should be created. Refer to Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Network Overview for information on networks. (default = default network)

--log-http
Print the full content of http request-response pairs. To enable the printout, set this flag to true. Use this flag when you need log output to file a bug report against ctpu. Refer to ctpu README for details.

--machine-type
Configure the size of your Compute Engine VM. A full list of machine types is available on the Cloud Machine Types page. (default = n1-standard-2)

--name
Override the name to use for VMs and Cloud TPU. (default = your username)

--noconf
Skip confirmation.

--preemptible
Create a preemptible Cloud TPU node. A preemptible Cloud TPU costs less per hour than a non-preemptible one. Cloud TPU service can exit a preemptible device at any time. (default = non-preemptible)

--preemptible-vm
Create a preemptible Compute Engine VM. A preemptible VM costs less per hour than a non-preemptible VM. The Compute Engine service can exit the VM instance at any time. (default = non-preemptible)

--print-welcome
Always print the welcome message.

--project
Override the GCP project name to use when allocating VMs and TPUs. Specify a value from cloud config or Compute Engine metadata, usually your project name. If a good value cannot be found, you must to provide a value on the command line.

--tf-version
Set the version of TensorFlow to use when creating the Compute Engine VM and the Cloud TPU. (default = latest stable release)

--tpu-only
Allocate a Cloud TPU only; use this only if you already have a VM available.

--tpu-size
Configure the size and hardware version of a Cloud TPU.

--use-dl-images
Use Deep Learning VM Images (refer docs: https://cloud.google.com/deep-learning-vm/) instead of TPU machine images. (default = TPU machine images)

--vm-only
Allocate a VM only; use this when you are not ready to set up and pay for a TPU.

--zone
Override the Compute Engine zone to use when allocating VMs and Cloud TPU. On the command line, run ctpu help up to view the list.

version

Description

Prints out the version of ctpu installed.

Usage

ctpu version

Output

ctpu version
Output: ctpu version: 1.9