The first time you start the PBS server on a node, you start it with the option -t create. This tells the server there is no PBS server attribute database yet. Once PBS is started you use qmgr to set the PBS attributes. There is a sample file qmgr-setup in the source code repository [3]. It shows the sort of attributes that must be set before you start using PBS. For example, you must enter the name of all users allowed to change the PBS attributes, and you must enter the hostnames of all machines allows to send requests to the server. The PBS Adminstrator's Guide explains the use of server attributes, and the PBS External Reference Specification lists all attributes.
The PBS server creates the serverdb file in the server_priv directory of the runtime directory. This file contains the server attributes.
Subsequently when you start the server, you start it with no options. The server will look for the serverdb file and read it's attributes from there.
If you wish to restart the PBS server, you must be cautious. To restart the server in an orderly way, first stop it using the qterm command:
qterm -t quick
The qterm command shuts down the server. But by default it kills all running PBS jobs first. You must use the -quick option if you wish PBS to leave running jobs alone.
If qterm fails, you can use kill -9 to kill the server without harming running jobs, but it is much prefered to use qterm.
Once you are ready to restart the server, just start pbs_server with no options.