Contents Index

3.2 Installation, Start Up, Shut Down, and Reconfiguration

  3.2.1 Obtaining the HTCondor Software
  3.2.2 Installation on Unix
   Preparation
    Unix Installation from a repository
    Unix Installation from a Tarball
    Starting HTCondor Under Unix After Installation
  3.2.3 Installation on Windows
   Installation Requirements
   Preparing to Install HTCondor under Windows
    Installation Procedure Using the MSI Program
    Unattended Installation Procedure Using the Included Setup Program
   Manual Installation HTCondor on Windows
    Starting HTCondor Under Windows After Installation
    HTCondor is Running Under Windows ... Now What?
  3.2.4 Upgrading – Installing a New Version on an Existing Pool
  3.2.5 Shutting Down and Restarting an HTCondor Pool
  3.2.6 Reconfiguring an HTCondor Pool

This section contains the instructions for installing HTCondor. The installation will have a default configuration that can be customized. Sections of the manual below explain customization.

Please read this entire section before starting installation.

Please read the copyright and disclaimer information in section . Installation and use of HTCondor is acknowledgment that you have read and agree to the terms.

Before installing HTCondor, please consider joining the htcondor-world mailing list. Traffic on this list is kept to an absolute minimum; it is only used to announce new releases of HTCondor. To subscribe, go to https://lists.cs.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/htcondor-world, and fill out the online form.

You might also want to consider joining the htcondor-users mailing list. This list is meant to be a forum for HTCondor users to learn from each other and discuss using HTCondor. It is an excellent place to ask the HTCondor community about using and configuring HTCondor. To subscribe, go to https://lists.cs.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/htcondor-users, and fill out the online form.

Note that forward and reverse DNS lookup must be enabled for HTCondor to work properly.

3.2.1 Obtaining the HTCondor Software

The first step to installing HTCondor is to download it from the HTCondor web site, http://htcondor.org/. The downloads are available from the downloads page, at http://htcondor.org/downloads/.

3.2.2 Installation on Unix

The HTCondor binary distribution is packaged in the following files and directories:

LICENSE-2.0.txt
the licensing agreement. By installing HTCondor, you agree to the contents of this file
README
general information
bin
directory which contains the distribution HTCondor user programs.
bosco_install
the Perl script used to install Bosco.
condor_configure
the Perl script used to install and configure HTCondor.
condor_install
the Perl script used to install HTCondor.
etc
directory which contains the distribution HTCondor configuration data.
examples
directory containing C, Fortran and C++ example programs to run with HTCondor.
include
directory containing HTCondor header files.
lib
directory which contains the distribution HTCondor libraries.
libexec
directory which contains the distribution HTCondor auxiliary programs for use internally by HTCondor.
man
directory which contains the distribution HTCondor manual pages.
sbin
directory containing HTCondor daemon binaries and admin tools.
src
directory containing source for some interfaces.

Preparation

Before installation, you need to make a few important decisions about the basic layout of your pool. These decisions answer the following questions:

  1. What machine will be the central manager?
  2. What machines should be allowed to submit jobs?
  3. Will HTCondor run as root or not?
  4. Who will be administering HTCondor on the machines in your pool?
  5. Will you have a Unix user named condor and will its home directory be shared?
  6. Where should the machine-specific directories for HTCondor go?
  7. Where should the parts of the HTCondor system be installed?
  8. Am I using AFS?
  9. Do I have enough disk space for HTCondor?
1. What machine will be the central manager?

One machine in your pool must be the central manager. Install HTCondor on this machine first. This is the centralized information repository for the HTCondor pool, and it is also the machine that does match-making between available machines and submitted jobs. If the central manager machine crashes, any currently active matches in the system will keep running, but no new matches will be made. Moreover, most HTCondor tools will stop working. Because of the importance of this machine for the proper functioning of HTCondor, install the central manager on a machine that is likely to stay up all the time, or on one that will be rebooted quickly if it does crash.

Also consider network traffic and your network layout when choosing your central manager. All the daemons send updates (by default, every 5 minutes) to this machine. Memory requirements for the central manager differ by the number of machines in the pool: a pool with up to about 100 machines will require approximately 25 Mbytes of memory for the central manager’s tasks, and a pool with about 1000 machines will require approximately 100 Mbytes of memory for the central manager’s tasks.

A faster CPU will speed up matchmaking.

Generally jobs should not be either submitted or run on the central manager machine.

2. Which machines should be allowed to submit jobs?

HTCondor can restrict the machines allowed to submit jobs. Alternatively, it can allow any machine the network allows to connect to a submit machine to submit jobs. If the HTCondor pool is behind a firewall, and all machines inside the firewall are trusted, the ALLOW_WRITE configuration entry can be set to */*. Otherwise, it should be set to reflect the set of machines permitted to submit jobs to this pool. HTCondor tries to be secure by default: it is shipped with an invalid value that allows no machine to connect and submit jobs.

3. Will HTCondor run as root or not?

We strongly recommend that the HTCondor daemons be installed and run as the Unix user root. Without this, HTCondor can do very little to enforce security and policy decisions. You can install HTCondor as any user; however there are serious security and performance consequences do doing a non-root installation. Please see section 3.8.13 in the manual for the details and ramifications of installing and running HTCondor as a Unix user other than root.

4. Who will administer HTCondor?

Either root will be administering HTCondor directly, or someone else will be acting as the HTCondor administrator. If root has delegated the responsibility to another person, keep in mind that as long as HTCondor is started up as root, it should be clearly understood that whoever has the ability to edit the condor configuration files can effectively run arbitrary programs as root.

The HTCondor administrator will be regularly updating HTCondor by following these instructions or by using the system-specific installation methods below. The administrator will also customize policies of the HTCondor submit and execute nodes. This person will also receive information from HTCondor if something goes wrong with the pool, as described in the documentation of the CONDOR_ADMIN configuration variable.

5. Will you have a Unix user named condor, and will its home directory be shared?

To simplify installation of HTCondor, you should create a Unix user named condor on all machines in the pool. The HTCondor daemons will create files (such as the log files) owned by this user, and the home directory can be used to specify the location of files and directories needed by HTCondor. The home directory of this user can either be shared among all machines in your pool, or could be a separate home directory on the local partition of each machine. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. Having the directories centralized can make administration easier, but also concentrates the resource usage such that you potentially need a lot of space for a single shared home directory. See the section below on machine-specific directories for more details.

Note that the user condor must not be an account into which a person can log in. If a person can log in as user condor, it permits a major security breach, in that the user condor could submit jobs that run as any other user, providing complete access to the user’s data by the jobs. A standard way of not allowing log in to an account on Unix platforms is to enter an invalid shell in the password file.

If you choose not to create a user named condor, then you must specify either via the CONDOR_IDS environment variable or the CONDOR_IDS config file setting which uid.gid pair should be used for the ownership of various HTCondor files. See section 3.8.13 on UIDs in HTCondor in the Administrator’s Manual for details.

6. Where should the machine-specific directories for HTCondor go?

HTCondor needs a few directories that are unique on every machine in your pool. These are execute, spool, log, (and possibly lock). Generally, all of them are subdirectories of a single machine specific directory called the local directory (specified by the LOCAL_DIR macro in the configuration file). Each should be owned by the user that HTCondor is to be run as. Do not stage other files in any of these directories; any files not created by HTCondor in these directories are subject to removal.

If you have a Unix user named condor with a local home directory on each machine, the LOCAL_DIR could just be user condor’s home directory (LOCAL_DIR = $(TILDE) in the configuration file). If this user’s home directory is shared among all machines in your pool, you would want to create a directory for each host (named by host name) for the local directory (for example, LOCAL_DIR = $(TILDE)/hosts/$(HOSTNAME)). If you do not have a condor account on your machines, you can put these directories wherever you’d like. However, where to place the directories will require some thought, as each one has its own resource needs:

execute
This is the directory that acts as the current working directory for any HTCondor jobs that run on a given execute machine. The binary for the remote job is copied into this directory, so there must be enough space for it. (HTCondor will not send a job to a machine that does not have enough disk space to hold the initial binary..) In addition, if the remote job dumps core for some reason, it is first dumped to the execute directory before it is sent back to the submit machine. So, put the execute directory on a partition with enough space to hold a possible core file from the jobs submitted to your pool.
spool
The spool directory holds the job queue and history files, and the checkpoint files for all jobs submitted from a given machine. As a result, disk space requirements for the spool directory can be quite large, particularly if users are submitting jobs with very large executables or image sizes. By using a checkpoint server (see section 3.10 on Installing a Checkpoint Server on for details), you can ease the disk space requirements, since all checkpoint files are stored on the server instead of the spool directories for each machine. However, the initial checkpoint files (the executables for all the clusters you submit) are still stored in the spool directory, so you will need some space, even with a checkpoint server. The amount of space will depend on how many executables, and what size they are, that need to be stored in the spool directory.
log
Each HTCondor daemon writes its own log file, and each log file is placed in the log directory. You can specify what size you want these files to grow to before they are rotated, so the disk space requirements of the directory are configurable. The larger the log files, the more historical information they will hold if there is a problem, but the more disk space they use up. If you have a network file system installed at your pool, you might want to place the log directories in a shared location (such as /usr/local/condor/logs/$(HOSTNAME)), so that you can view the log files from all your machines in a single location. However, if you take this approach, you will have to specify a local partition for the lock directory (see below).
lock
HTCondor uses a small number of lock files to synchronize access to certain files that are shared between multiple daemons. Because of problems encountered with file locking and network file systems (particularly NFS), these lock files should be placed on a local partition on each machine. By default, they are placed in the log directory. If you place your log directory on a network file system partition, specify a local partition for the lock files with the LOCK parameter in the configuration file (such as /var/lock/condor).

Generally speaking, it is recommended that you do not put these directories (except lock) on the same partition as /var, since if the partition fills up, you will fill up /var as well. This will cause lots of problems for your machines. Ideally, you will have a separate partition for the HTCondor directories. Then, the only consequence of filling up the directories will be HTCondor’s malfunction, not your whole machine.

7. Where should the parts of the HTCondor system be installed?
Configuration Files
There can be more than one configuration file. They allow different levels of control over how HTCondor is configured on each machine in the pool. The global configuration file is shared by all machines in the pool. For ease of administration, this file should be located on a shared file system, if possible. Local configuration files override settings in the global file permitting different daemons to run, different policies for when to start and stop HTCondor jobs, and so on. There may be configuration files specific to each platform in the pool. See section 3.14.4 on about Configuring HTCondor for Multiple Platforms for details.

The location of configuration files is described in section 3.3.2.

Release Directory

Every binary distribution contains a contains five subdirectories: bin, etc, lib, sbin, and libexec. Wherever you choose to install these five directories we call the release directory (specified by the RELEASE_DIR macro in the configuration file). Each release directory contains platform-dependent binaries and libraries, so you will need to install a separate one for each kind of machine in your pool. For ease of administration, these directories should be located on a shared file system, if possible.

  • User Binaries:

    All of the files in the bin directory are programs that HTCondor users should expect to have in their path. You could either put them in a well known location (such as /usr/local/condor/bin) which you have HTCondor users add to their PATH environment variable, or copy those files directly into a well known place already in the user’s PATHs (such as /usr/local/bin). With the above examples, you could also leave the binaries in /usr/local/condor/bin and put in soft links from /usr/local/bin to point to each program.

  • System Binaries:

    All of the files in the sbin directory are HTCondor daemons and agents, or programs that only the HTCondor administrator would need to run. Therefore, add these programs only to the PATH of the HTCondor administrator.

  • Private HTCondor Binaries:

    All of the files in the libexec directory are HTCondor programs that should never be run by hand, but are only used internally by HTCondor.

  • lib Directory:

    The files in the lib directory are the HTCondor libraries that must be linked in with user jobs for all of HTCondor’s checkpointing and migration features to be used. lib also contains scripts used by the condor_compile program to help re-link jobs with the HTCondor libraries. These files should be placed in a location that is world-readable, but they do not need to be placed in anyone’s PATH. The condor_compile script checks the configuration file for the location of the lib directory.

  • etc Directory:

    etc contains an examples subdirectory which holds various example configuration files and other files used for installing HTCondor. etc is the recommended location to keep the master copy of your configuration files. You can put in soft links from one of the places mentioned above that HTCondor checks automatically to find its global configuration file.

Documentation

The documentation provided with HTCondor is currently available in HTML, Postscript and PDF (Adobe Acrobat). It can be locally installed wherever is customary at your site. You can also find the HTCondor documentation on the web at: http://htcondor.org/manual.

8. Am I using AFS?

If you are using AFS at your site, be sure to read the section 3.14.1 in the manual. HTCondor does not currently have a way to authenticate itself to AFS. A solution is not ready for Version 8.7.10. This implies that you are probably not going to want to have the LOCAL_DIR for HTCondor on AFS. However, you can (and probably should) have the HTCondor RELEASE_DIR on AFS, so that you can share one copy of those files and upgrade them in a centralized location. You will also have to do something special if you submit jobs to HTCondor from a directory on AFS. Again, read manual section 3.14.1 for all the details.

9. Do I have enough disk space for HTCondor?

The compressed downloads of HTCondor currently range from a low of about 13 Mbytes for 64-bit Ubuntu 12/Linux to about 115 Mbytes for Windows. The compressed source code takes approximately 17 Mbytes.

In addition, you will need a lot of disk space in the local directory of any machines that are submitting jobs to HTCondor. See question 6 above for details on this.

Unix Installation from a repository

Installing HTCondor from repositories preferred for systems that you administer. If you do not have administrative access, use the tarball instructions below.

Repositories are available Red Hat Enterprise Linux and derivatives such as CentOS and Scientific Linux. Repositories are also available for Debian and Ubuntu LTS. Visit the installation documentation at https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/instructions/

Unix Installation from a Tarball

Note that installation from a tarball is no longer the preferred method for installing HTCondor on Unix systems. Installation via RPM or Debian package is recommended if available for your Unix version.

An overview of the tarball-based installation process is as follows:

  1. Untar the HTCondor software.
  2. Run condor_install or condor_configure to install the software.

Details are given below.

After download, all the files are in a compressed, tar format. They need to be untarred, as

  tar xzf <completename>.tar.gz

After untarring, the directory will have the Perl scripts condor_configure and condor_install (and bosco_install), as well as bin, etc, examples, include, lib, libexec, man, sbin, sql and src subdirectories.

The Perl script condor_configure installs HTCondor. Command-line arguments specify all needed information to this script. The script can be executed multiple times, to modify or further set the configuration. condor_configure has been tested using Perl 5.003. Use this or a more recent version of Perl.

condor_configure and condor_install are the same program, but have different default behaviors. condor_install is identical to running

  condor_configure --install=.

condor_configure and condor_install work on the named directories. As the names imply, condor_install is used to install HTCondor, whereas condor_configure is used to modify the configuration of an existing HTCondor install.

condor_configure and condor_install are completely command-line driven and are not interactive. Several command-line arguments are always needed with condor_configure and condor_install. The argument

  --install=/path/to/release

specifies the path to the HTCondor release directories. The default command-line argument for condor_install is

  --install=.

The argument

  --install-dir=<directory>

or

  --prefix=<directory>

specifies the path to the install directory.

The argument

  --local-dir=<directory>

specifies the path to the local directory.

The --type option to condor_configure specifies one or more of the roles that a machine can take on within the HTCondor pool: central manager, submit or execute. These options are given in a comma separated list. So, if a machine is both a submit and execute machine, the proper command-line option is

  --type=submit,execute

Install HTCondor on the central manager machine first. If HTCondor will run as root in this pool (Item 3 above), run condor_install as root, and it will install and set the file permissions correctly. On the central manager machine, run condor_install as follows.

% condor_install --prefix=~condor \  
--local-dir=/scratch/condor --type=manager

To update the above HTCondor installation, for example, to also be submit machine:

% condor_configure --prefix=~condor \  
--local-dir=/scratch/condor --type=manager,submit

As in the above example, the central manager can also be a submit point or an execute machine, but this is only recommended for very small pools. If this is the case, the --type option changes to manager,execute or manager,submit or manager,submit,execute.

After the central manager is installed, the execute and submit machines should then be configured. Decisions about whether to run HTCondor as root should be consistent throughout the pool. For each machine in the pool, run

% condor_install --prefix=~condor \  
--local-dir=/scratch/condor --type=execute,submit

See the condor_configure manual page 1891 for details.

Starting HTCondor Under Unix After Installation

Now that HTCondor has been installed on the machine(s), there are a few things to check before starting up HTCondor.

  1. Read through the <release_dir>/etc/condor_config file. There are a lot of possible settings and you should at least take a look at the first two main sections to make sure everything looks okay. In particular, you might want to set up security for HTCondor. See the section 3.8.1 to learn how to do this.
  2. For Linux platforms, run the condor_kbdd to monitor keyboard and mouse activity on all machines within the pool that will run a condor_startd; these are machines that execute jobs. To do this, the subsystem KBDD will need to be added to the DAEMON_LIST configuration variable definition.

    For Unix platforms other than Linux, HTCondor can monitor the activity of your mouse and keyboard, provided that you tell it where to look. You do this with the CONSOLE_DEVICES entry in the condor_startd section of the configuration file. On most platforms, reasonable defaults are provided. For example, the default device for the mouse is ’mouse’, since most installations have a soft link from /dev/mouse that points to the right device (such as tty00 if you have a serial mouse, psaux if you have a PS/2 bus mouse, etc). If you do not have a /dev/mouse link, you should either create one (you will be glad you did), or change the CONSOLE_DEVICES entry in HTCondor’s configuration file. This entry is a comma separated list, so you can have any devices in /dev count as ’console devices’ and activity will be reported in the condor_startd’s ClassAd as ConsoleIdleTime.

  3. (Linux only) HTCondor needs to be able to find the utmp file. According to the Linux File System Standard, this file should be /var/run/utmp. If HTCondor cannot find it there, it looks in /var/adm/utmp. If it still cannot find it, it gives up. So, if your Linux distribution places this file somewhere else, be sure to put a soft link from /var/run/utmp to point to the real location.

To start up the HTCondor daemons, execute the command <release_dir>/sbin/condor_master. This is the HTCondor master, whose only job in life is to make sure the other HTCondor daemons are running. The master keeps track of the daemons, restarts them if they crash, and periodically checks to see if you have installed new binaries (and, if so, restarts the affected daemons).

If you are setting up your own pool, you should start HTCondor on your central manager machine first. If you have done a submit-only installation and are adding machines to an existing pool, the start order does not matter.

To ensure that HTCondor is running, you can run either:

        ps -ef | egrep condor_

or

        ps -aux | egrep condor_

depending on your flavor of Unix. On a central manager machine that can submit jobs as well as execute them, there will be processes for:

On a central manager machine that does not submit jobs nor execute them, there will be processes for:

For a machine that only submits jobs, there will be processes for:

For a machine that only executes jobs, there will be processes for:

Once you are sure the HTCondor daemons are running, check to make sure that they are communicating with each other. You can run condor_status to get a one line summary of the status of each machine in your pool.

Once you are sure HTCondor is working properly, you should add condor_master into your startup/bootup scripts (i.e. /etc/rc ) so that your machine runs condor_master upon bootup. condor_master will then fire up the necessary HTCondor daemons whenever your machine is rebooted.

If your system uses System-V style init scripts, you can look in <release_dir>/etc/examples/condor.boot for a script that can be used to start and stop HTCondor automatically by init. Normally, you would install this script as /etc/init.d/condor and put in soft link from various directories (for example, /etc/rc2.d) that point back to /etc/init.d/condor. The exact location of these scripts and links will vary on different platforms.

If your system uses BSD style boot scripts, you probably have an /etc/rc.local file. Add a line to start up <release_dir>/sbin/condor_master.

Now that the HTCondor daemons are running, there are a few things you can and should do:

  1. (Optional) Do a full install for the condor_compile script. condor_compile assists in linking jobs with the HTCondor libraries to take advantage of all of HTCondor’s features. As it is currently installed, it will work by placing it in front of any of the following commands that you would normally use to link your code: gcc, g++, g77, cc, acc, c89, CC, f77, fort77 and ld. If you complete the full install, you will be able to use condor_compile with any command whatsoever, in particular, make. See section 3.14.5 in the manual for directions.
  2. Try building and submitting some test jobs. See examples/README for details.
  3. If your site uses the AFS network file system, see section 3.14.1 in the manual.
  4. We strongly recommend that you start up HTCondor (run the condor_master daemon) as user root. If you must start HTCondor as some user other than root, see section 3.8.13.

3.2.3 Installation on Windows

This section contains the instructions for installing the Windows version of HTCondor. The install program will set up a slightly customized configuration file that can be further customized after the installation has completed.

Be sure that the HTCondor tools are of the same version as the daemons installed. The HTCondor executable for distribution is packaged in a single file named similarly to:

  condor-8.4.11-390598-Windows-x86.msi

This file is approximately 107 Mbytes in size, and it can be removed once HTCondor is fully installed.

For any installation, HTCondor services are installed and run as the Local System account. Running the HTCondor services as any other account (such as a domain user) is not supported and could be problematic.

Installation Requirements

Preparing to Install HTCondor under Windows

Before installing the Windows version of HTCondor, there are two major decisions to make about the basic layout of the pool.

  1. What machine will be the central manager?
  2. Is there enough disk space for HTCondor?

If the answers to these questions are already known, skip to the Windows Installation Procedure section below, section 3.2.3. If unsure, read on.

Installation Procedure Using the MSI Program

Installation of HTCondor must be done by a user with administrator privileges. After installation, the HTCondor services will be run under the local system account. When HTCondor is running a user job, however, it will run that user job with normal user permissions.

Download HTCondor, and start the installation process by running the installer. The HTCondor installation is completed by answering questions and choosing options within the following steps.

If HTCondor is already installed.

If HTCondor has been previously installed, a dialog box will appear before the installation of HTCondor proceeds. The question asks if you wish to preserve your current HTCondor configuration files. Answer yes or no, as appropriate.

If you answer yes, your configuration files will not be changed, and you will proceed to the point where the new binaries will be installed.

If you answer no, then there will be a second question that asks if you want to use answers given during the previous installation as default answers.

STEP 1: License Agreement.

The first step in installing HTCondor is a welcome screen and license agreement. You are reminded that it is best to run the installation when no other Windows programs are running. If you need to close other Windows programs, it is safe to cancel the installation and close them. You are asked to agree to the license. Answer yes or no. If you should disagree with the License, the installation will not continue.

Also fill in name and company information, or use the defaults as given.

STEP 2: HTCondor Pool Configuration.

The HTCondor configuration needs to be set based upon if this is a new pool or to join an existing one. Choose the appropriate radio button.

For a new pool, enter a chosen name for the pool. To join an existing pool, enter the host name of the central manager of the pool.

STEP 3: This Machine’s Roles.

Each machine within an HTCondor pool can either submit jobs or execute submitted jobs, or both submit and execute jobs. A check box determines if this machine will be a submit point for the pool.

A set of radio buttons determines the ability and configuration of the ability to execute jobs. There are four choices:

Do not run jobs on this machine.
This machine will not execute HTCondor jobs.
Always run jobs and never suspend them.
Run jobs when the keyboard has been idle for 15 minutes.
Run jobs when the keyboard has been idle for 15 minutes, and the CPU is idle.

For testing purposes, it is often helpful to use the always run HTCondor jobs option.

For a machine that is to execute jobs and the choice is one of the last two in the list, HTCondor needs to further know what to do with the currently running jobs. There are two choices:

Keep the job in memory and continue when the machine meets the condition chosen for when to run jobs.
Restart the job on a different machine.

This choice involves a trade off. Restarting the job on a different machine is less intrusive on the workstation owner than leaving the job in memory for a later time. A suspended job left in memory will require swap space, which could be a scarce resource. Leaving a job in memory, however, has the benefit that accumulated run time is not lost for a partially completed job.

STEP 4: The Account Domain.

Enter the machine’s accounting (or UID) domain. On this version of HTCondor for Windows, this setting is only used for user priorities (see section 3.6) and to form a default e-mail address for the user.

STEP 5: E-mail Settings.

Various parts of HTCondor will send e-mail to an HTCondor administrator if something goes wrong and requires human attention. Specify the e-mail address and the SMTP relay host of this administrator. Please pay close attention to this e-mail, since it will indicate problems in the HTCondor pool.

STEP 6: Java Settings.
In order to run jobs in the java universe, HTCondor must have the path to the jvm executable on the machine. The installer will search for and list the jvm path, if it finds one. If not, enter the path. To disable use of the java universe, leave the field blank.
STEP 7: Host Permission Settings.
Machines within the HTCondor pool will need various types of access permission. The three categories of permission are read, write, and administrator. Enter the machines or domain to be given access permissions, or use the defaults provided. Wild cards and macros are permitted.
Read
Read access allows a machine to obtain information about HTCondor such as the status of machines in the pool and the job queues. All machines in the pool should be given read access. In addition, giving read access to *.cs.wisc.edu will allow the HTCondor team to obtain information about the HTCondor pool, in the event that debugging is needed.
Write
All machines in the pool should be given write access. It allows the machines you specify to send information to your local HTCondor daemons, for example, to start an HTCondor job. Note that for a machine to join the HTCondor pool, it must have both read and write access to all of the machines in the pool.
Administrator
A machine with administrator access will be allowed more extended permission to do things such as change other user’s priorities, modify the job queue, turn HTCondor services on and off, and restart HTCondor. The central manager should be given administrator access and is the default listed. This setting is granted to the entire machine, so care should be taken not to make this too open.

For more details on these access permissions, and others that can be manually changed in your configuration file, please see the section titled Setting Up IP/Host-Based Security in HTCondor in section section 3.8.9.

STEP 8: VM Universe Setting.
A radio button determines whether this machine will be configured to run vm universe jobs utilizing VMware. In addition to having the VMware Server installed, HTCondor also needs Perl installed. The resources available for vm universe jobs can be tuned with these settings, or the defaults listed can be used.
Version
Use the default value, as only one version is currently supported.
Maximum Memory
The maximum memory that each virtual machine is permitted to use on the target machine.
Maximum Number of VMs
The number of virtual machines that can be run in parallel on the target machine.
Networking Support
The VMware instances can be configured to use network support. There are four options in the pull-down menu.
  • None: No networking support.
  • NAT: Network address translation.
  • Bridged: Bridged mode.
  • NAT and Bridged: Allow both methods.
Path to Perl Executable
The path to the Perl executable.
STEP 9: HDFS Settings.
A radio button enables support for the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). When enabled, a further radio button specifies either name node or data node mode.

Running HDFS requires Java to be installed, and HTCondor must know where the installation is. Running HDFS in data node mode also requires the installation of Cygwin, and the path to the Cygwin directory must be added to the global PATH environment variable.

HDFS has several configuration options that must be filled in to be used.

Primary Name Node
The full host name of the primary name node.
Name Node Port
The port that the name node is listening on.
Name Node Web Port
The port the name node’s web interface is bound to. It should be different from the name node’s main port.
STEP 10: Choose Setup Type

The next step is where the destination of the HTCondor files will be decided. We recommend that HTCondor be installed in the location shown as the default in the install choice: C:\Condor. This is due to several hard coded paths in scripts and configuration files. Clicking on the Custom choice permits changing the installation directory.

Installation on the local disk is chosen for several reasons. The HTCondor services run as local system, and within Microsoft Windows, local system has no network privileges. Therefore, for HTCondor to operate, HTCondor should be installed on a local hard drive, as opposed to a network drive (file server).

The second reason for installation on the local disk is that the Windows usage of drive letters has implications for where HTCondor is placed. The drive letter used must be not change, even when different users are logged in. Local drive letters do not change under normal operation of Windows.

While it is strongly discouraged, it may be possible to place HTCondor on a hard drive that is not local, if a dependency is added to the service control manager such that HTCondor starts after the required file services are available.

Unattended Installation Procedure Using the Included Setup Program

This section details how to run the HTCondor for Windows installer in an unattended batch mode. This mode is one that occurs completely from the command prompt, without the GUI interface.

The HTCondor for Windows installer uses the Microsoft Installer (MSI) technology, and it can be configured for unattended installs analogous to any other ordinary MSI installer.

The following is a sample batch file that is used to set all the properties necessary for an unattended install.

@echo on  
set ARGS=  
set ARGS=NEWPOOL="N"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% POOLNAME=""  
set ARGS=%ARGS% RUNJOBS="C"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% VACATEJOBS="Y"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% SUBMITJOBS="Y"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% CONDOREMAIL="you@yours.com"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% SMTPSERVER="smtp.localhost"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% HOSTALLOWREAD="*"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% HOSTALLOWWRITE="*"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% HOSTALLOWADMINISTRATOR="$(IP_ADDRESS)"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% INSTALLDIR="C:\Condor"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% POOLHOSTNAME="$(IP_ADDRESS)"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% ACCOUNTINGDOMAIN="none"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% JVMLOCATION="C:\Windows\system32\java.exe"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% USEVMUNIVERSE="N"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMMEMORY="128"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMMAXNUMBER="$(NUM_CPUS)"  
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMNETWORKING="N"  
REM set ARGS=%ARGS% LOCALCONFIG="http://my.example.com/condor_config.$(FULL_HOSTNAME)"  
 
msiexec /qb /l* condor-install-log.txt /i condor-8.0.0-133173-Windows-x86.msi %ARGS%

Each property corresponds to answers that would have been supplied while running an interactive installer. The following is a brief explanation of each property as it applies to unattended installations:

NEWPOOL = < Y | N >
determines whether the installer will create a new pool with the target machine as the central manager.
POOLNAME
sets the name of the pool, if a new pool is to be created. Possible values are either the name or the empty string "".
RUNJOBS = < N | A | I | C >
determines when HTCondor will run jobs. This can be set to:
VACATEJOBS = < Y | N >
determines what HTCondor should do when it has to stop the execution of a user job. When set to Y, HTCondor will vacate the job and start it somewhere else if possible. When set to N, HTCondor will merely suspend the job in memory and wait for the machine to become available again.
SUBMITJOBS = < Y | N >
will cause the installer to configure the machine as a submit node when set to Y.
CONDOREMAIL
sets the e-mail address of the HTCondor administrator. Possible values are an e-mail address or the empty string "".
HOSTALLOWREAD
is a list of host names that are allowed to issue READ commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the HOSTALLOW_READ setting in the configuration file, as described in section 3.8.9.
HOSTALLOWWRITE
is a list of host names that are allowed to issue WRITE commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the HOSTALLOW_WRITE setting in the configuration file, as described in section 3.8.9.
HOSTALLOWADMINISTRATOR
is a list of host names that are allowed to issue ADMINISTRATOR commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the HOSTALLOW_ADMINISTRATOR setting in the configuration file, as described in section 3.8.9.
INSTALLDIR
defines the path to the directory where HTCondor will be installed.
POOLHOSTNAME
defines the host name of the pool’s central manager.
ACCOUNTINGDOMAIN
defines the accounting (or UID) domain the target machine will be in.
JVMLOCATION
defines the path to Java virtual machine on the target machine.
SMTPSERVER
defines the host name of the SMTP server that the target machine is to use to send e-mail.
VMMEMORY
an integer value that defines the maximum memory each VM run on the target machine.
VMMAXNUMBER
an integer value that defines the number of VMs that can be run in parallel on the target machine.
VMNETWORKING = < N | A | B | C >
determines if VM Universe can use networking. This can be set to:
USEVMUNIVERSE = < Y | N >
will cause the installer to enable VM Universe jobs on the target machine.
LOCALCONFIG
defines the location of the local configuration file. The value can be the path to a file on the local machine, or it can be a URL beginning with http. If the value is a URL, then the condor_urlfetch tool is invoked to fetch configuration whenever the configuration is read.
PERLLOCATION
defines the path to Perl on the target machine. This is required in order to use the vm universe.

After defining each of these properties for the MSI installer, the installer can be started with the msiexec command. The following command starts the installer in unattended mode, and it dumps a journal of the installer’s progress to a log file:

msiexec /qb /lxv* condor-install-log.txt /i condor-8.0.0-173133-Windows-x86.msi [property=value] ...

More information on the features of msiexec can be found at Microsoft’s website at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/msiexec.mspx.

Manual Installation HTCondor on Windows

If you are to install HTCondor on many different machines, you may wish to use some other mechanism to install HTCondor on additional machines rather than running the Setup program described above on each machine.

WARNING: This is for advanced users only! All others should use the Setup program described above.

Here is a brief overview of how to install HTCondor manually without using the provided GUI-based setup program:

The Service
The service that HTCondor will install is called "Condor". The Startup Type is Automatic. The service should log on as System Account, but do not enable "Allow Service to Interact with Desktop". The program that is run is condor_master.exe.

The HTCondor service can be installed and removed using the sc.exe tool, which is included in Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server. The tool is also available as part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit.

Installation can be done as follows:

sc create Condor binpath= c:\condor\bin\condor_master.exe

To remove the service, use:

sc delete Condor

The Registry
HTCondor uses a few registry entries in its operation. The key that HTCondor uses is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Condor. The values that HTCondor puts in this registry key serve two purposes.
  1. The values of CONDOR_CONFIG and RELEASE_DIR are used for HTCondor to start its service.

    CONDOR_CONFIG should point to the condor_config file. In this version of HTCondor, it must reside on the local disk.

    RELEASE_DIR should point to the directory where HTCondor is installed. This is typically C:\Condor, and again, this must reside on the local disk.

  2. The other purpose is storing the entries from the last installation so that they can be used for the next one.
The File System
The files that are needed for HTCondor to operate are identical to the Unix version of HTCondor, except that executable files end in .exe. For example the on Unix one of the files is condor_master and on HTCondor the corresponding file is condor_master.exe.

These files currently must reside on the local disk for a variety of reasons. Advanced Windows users might be able to put the files on remote resources. The main concern is twofold. First, the files must be there when the service is started. Second, the files must always be in the same spot (including drive letter), no matter who is logged into the machine.

Note also that when installing manually, you will need to create the directories that HTCondor will expect to be present given your configuration. This normally is simply a matter of creating the log, spool, and execute directories. Do not stage other files in any of these directories; any files not created by HTCondor in these directories are subject to removal.

Starting HTCondor Under Windows After Installation

After the installation of HTCondor is completed, the HTCondor service must be started. If you used the GUI-based setup program to install HTCondor, the HTCondor service should already be started. If you installed manually, HTCondor must be started by hand, or you can simply reboot. NOTE: The HTCondor service will start automatically whenever you reboot your machine.

To start HTCondor by hand:

  1. From the Start menu, choose Settings.
  2. From the Settings menu, choose Control Panel.
  3. From the Control Panel, choose Services.
  4. From Services, choose Condor, and Start.

Or, alternatively you can enter the following command from a command prompt:

         net start condor

Run the Task Manager (Control-Shift-Escape) to check that HTCondor services are running. The following tasks should be running:

Also, you should now be able to open up a new cmd (DOS prompt) window, and the HTCondor bin directory should be in your path, so you can issue the normal HTCondor commands, such as condor_q and condor_status.

HTCondor is Running Under Windows ... Now What?

Once HTCondor services are running, try submitting test jobs. Example 2 within section 2.5.1 presents a vanilla universe job.

3.2.4 Upgrading – Installing a New Version on an Existing Pool

An upgrade changes the running version of HTCondor from the current installation to a newer version. The safe method to install and start running a newer version of HTCondor in essence is: shut down the current installation of HTCondor, install the newer version, and then restart HTCondor using the newer version. To allow for falling back to the current version, place the new version in a separate directory. Copy the existing configuration files, and modify the copy to point to and use the new version, as well as incorporate any configuration variables that are new or changed in the new version. Set the CONDOR_CONFIG environment variable to point to the new copy of the configuration, so the new version of HTCondor will use the new configuration when restarted.

As of HTCondor version 8.2.0, the default configuration file has been substantially reduced in size by defining compile-time default values for most configuration variables. Therefore, when upgrading from a version of HTCondor earlier than 8.2.0 to a more recent version, the option of reducing the size of the configuration file is an option. The goal is to identify and use only the configuration variable values that differ from the compile-time default values. This is facilitated by using condor_config_val with the -writeconfig:upgrade argument, to create a file that behaves the same as the current configuration, but is much smaller, because values matching the default values (as well as some obsolete variables) have been removed. Items in the file created by running condor_config_val with the -writeconfig:upgrade argument will be in the order that they were read from the original configuration files. This file is a convenient guide to stripping the cruft from old configuration files.

When upgrading from a version of HTCondor earlier than 6.8 to more recent version, note that the configuration settings must be modified for security reasons. Specifically, the HOSTALLOW_WRITE configuration variable must be explicitly changed, or no jobs can be submitted, and error messages will be issued by HTCondor tools.

Another way to upgrade leaves HTCondor running. HTCondor will automatically restart itself if the condor_master binary is updated, and this method takes advantage of this. Download the newer version, placing it such that it does not overwrite the currently running version. With the download will be a new set of configuration files; update this new set with any specializations implemented in the currently running version of HTCondor. Then, modify the currently running installation by changing its configuration such that the path to binaries points instead to the new binaries. One way to do that (under Unix) is to use a symbolic link that points to the current HTCondor installation directory (for example, /opt/condor). Change the symbolic link to point to the new directory. If HTCondor is configured to locate its binaries via the symbolic link, then after the symbolic link changes, the condor_master daemon notices the new binaries and restarts itself. How frequently it checks is controlled by the configuration variable MASTER_CHECK_NEW_EXEC_INTERVAL , which defaults 5 minutes.

When the condor_master notices new binaries, it begins a graceful restart. On an execute machine, a graceful restart means that running jobs are preempted. Standard universe jobs will attempt to take a checkpoint. This could be a bottleneck if all machines in a large pool attempt to do this at the same time. If they do not complete within the cutoff time specified by the KILL policy expression (defaults to 10 minutes), then the jobs are killed without producing a checkpoint. It may be appropriate to increase this cutoff time, and a better approach may be to upgrade the pool in stages rather than all at once.

For universes other than the standard universe, jobs are preempted. If jobs have been guaranteed a certain amount of uninterrupted run time with MaxJobRetirementTime, then the job is not killed until the specified amount of retirement time has been exceeded (which is 0 by default). The first step of killing the job is a soft kill signal, which can be intercepted by the job so that it can exit gracefully, perhaps saving its state. If the job has not gone away once the KILL expression fires (10 minutes by default), then the job is forcibly hard-killed. Since the graceful shutdown of jobs may rely on shared resources such as disks where state is saved, the same reasoning applies as for the standard universe: it may be appropriate to increase the cutoff time for large pools, and a better approach may be to upgrade the pool in stages to avoid jobs running out of time.

Another time limit to be aware of is the configuration variable SHUTDOWN_GRACEFUL_TIMEOUT. This defaults to 30 minutes. If the graceful restart is not completed within this time, a fast restart ensues. This causes jobs to be hard-killed.

3.2.5 Shutting Down and Restarting an HTCondor Pool

All of the commands described in this section are subject to the security policy chosen for the HTCondor pool. As such, the commands must be either run from a machine that has the proper authorization, or run by a user that is authorized to issue the commands. Section 3.8 details the implementation of security in HTCondor.

Shutting Down HTCondor
There are a variety of ways to shut down all or parts of an HTCondor pool. All utilize the condor_off tool.

To stop a single execute machine from running jobs, the condor_off command specifies the machine by host name.

  condor_off -startd <hostname>

A running standard universe job will be allowed to take a checkpoint before the job is killed. A running job under another universe will be killed. If it is instead desired that the machine stops running jobs only after the currently executing job completes, the command is

  condor_off -startd -peaceful <hostname>

Note that this waits indefinitely for the running job to finish, before the condor_startd daemon exits.

Th shut down all execution machines within the pool,

  condor_off -all -startd

To wait indefinitely for each machine in the pool to finish its current HTCondor job, shutting down all of the execute machines as they no longer have a running job,

  condor_off -all -startd -peaceful

To shut down HTCondor on a machine from which jobs are submitted,

  condor_off -schedd <hostname>

If it is instead desired that the submit machine shuts down only after all jobs that are currently in the queue are finished, first disable new submissions to the queue by setting the configuration variable

  MAX_JOBS_SUBMITTED = 0

See instructions below in section 3.2.6 for how to reconfigure a pool. After the reconfiguration, the command to wait for all jobs to complete and shut down the submission of jobs is

  condor_off -schedd -peaceful <hostname>

Substitute the option -all for the host name, if all submit machines in the pool are to be shut down.

Restarting HTCondor, If HTCondor Daemons Are Not Running
If HTCondor is not running, perhaps because one of the condor_off commands was used, then starting HTCondor daemons back up depends on which part of HTCondor is currently not running.

If no HTCondor daemons are running, then starting HTCondor is a matter of executing the condor_master daemon. The condor_master daemon will then invoke all other specified daemons on that machine. The condor_master daemon executes on every machine that is to run HTCondor.

If a specific daemon needs to be started up, and the condor_master daemon is already running, then issue the command on the specific machine with

  condor_on -subsystem <subsystemname>

where <subsystemname> is replaced by the daemon’s subsystem name. Or, this command might be issued from another machine in the pool (which has administrative authority) with

  condor_on <hostname> -subsystem <subsystemname>

where <subsystemname> is replaced by the daemon’s subsystem name, and <hostname> is replaced by the host name of the machine where this condor_on command is to be directed.

Restarting HTCondor, If HTCondor Daemons Are Running
If HTCondor daemons are currently running, but need to be killed and newly invoked, the condor_restart tool does this. This would be the case for a new value of a configuration variable for which using condor_reconfig is inadequate.

To restart all daemons on all machines in the pool,

  condor_restart -all

To restart all daemons on a single machine in the pool,

  condor_restart <hostname>

where <hostname> is replaced by the host name of the machine to be restarted.

3.2.6 Reconfiguring an HTCondor Pool

To change a global configuration variable and have all the machines start to use the new setting, change the value within the file, and send a condor_reconfig command to each host. Do this with a single command,

  condor_reconfig -all

If the global configuration file is not shared among all the machines, as it will be if using a shared file system, the change must be made to each copy of the global configuration file before issuing the condor_reconfig command.

Issuing a condor_reconfig command is inadequate for some configuration variables. For those, a restart of HTCondor is required. Those configuration variables that require a restart are listed in section 3.3.11. The manual page for condor_restart is at  2092.

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