The bebopd maintains a list of all compute nodes in the virtual machine and their status. When the bebopd exits, it writes a restart file with these PCT records. If the bebopd is started later on with the -r option (for restart, it will read in the restart file and contact all those PCTs to get their current status).
By default the restart file is written to /etc/local/saved_pct_list. You may override this default by setting the environment variable BEBOPD_RESTART_FILE, or by setting the analygous site file entry.