In NetworkComputer, as soon as a vovslave starts up, the vovserver can send jobs to it. At times, you may want to prevent this from happening, for example when adding new machines.

To do so, perform the following steps:

1. Use the -reserve option of vtk_slave_define in the slaves.tcl file. The syntax is reserve group/user/duration. You may omit the group or user, but both slashes must be present.

   For example:

   -reserve /nobody/2w

   This would reserve for user, nobody, for two weeks. This is a common idiom to reserve for a non-existent user in the slaves.tcl file.
2. When ready, modify or lift the reservation after vovslave has started using:

   % nc cmd vovslavemgr reserve [reserve-options]

   For example:

   % nc cmd vovslavemgr reserve -user swregr -duration 365d