6.3 Using condor_annex for the First Time

This guide assumes that you already have an AWS account, as well as a log-in account on a Linux machine with a public address and a system administrator who’s willing to open a port for you. All the terminal commands (shown in a box without a title) and file edits (shown in a box with an emphasized title) take place on the Linux machine. You can perform the web-based steps from wherever is convenient, although it will save you some copying if you run the browser on the Linux machine.

Before using condor_annex for the first time, you’ll have to do three things:

1. install a personal HTCondor
2. prepare your AWS account
3. configure condor_annex

Instructions for each follow.

6.3.1 Install a Personal HTCondor

We recommend that you install a personal HTCondor to make use of condor_annex; it’s simpler to configure that way. These instructions assume version 8.7.8 of HTCondor, but should work the 8.8.x series as well; change ‘8.7.8’ in the instructions wherever it appears.

These instructions assume that it’s OK to create a directory named condor-8.7.8 in your home directory; adjust them accordingly if you want to install HTCondor somewhere else.

Start by downloading (from https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/downloads/) the 8.7.8 release from the “tarballs” section that matches your Linux version. (If you don’t know your Linux version, ask your system administrator.) These instructions assume that the file you downloaded is located in your home directory on the Linux machine, so copy it there if necessary.

Then do the following; note that in this box, like other terminal boxes, the commands you type are preceded by by ‘$’ to distinguish them from any expected output, so don’t copy that part of each of the following lines. (Lines which end in a ‘\’ continue on the following line; be sure to copy both lines. Don’t copy the ‘\’ itself.)

Testing

Give HTCondor a few seconds to spin up and the try a few commands to make sure the basics are working. Your output will vary depending on the time of day, the name of your Linux machine, and its core count, but it should generally be pretty similar to the following.

You should also try to submit a job; create the following file. (We’ll refer to the contents of the box by the emphasized filename in later terminals and/or files.)

and submit it:

After a little while:

Configure Public Interface

The default personal HTCondor uses the “loopback” interface, which basically just means it won’t talk to anyone other than itself. For condor_annex to work, your personal HTCondor needs to use the Linux machine’s public interface. In most cases, that’s as simple as adding the following lines:

Restart HTCondor to force the changes to take effect:

To verify that this change worked, repeat the steps under section 6.3.1. Then proceed onto the next section.

Configure a Pool Password

In this section, you’ll configure your personal HTCondor to use a pool password. This is a simple but effective method of securing HTCondor’s communications to AWS.

Add the following lines:

You also need to run the following command, which prompts you to enter a password:

Enter a password.

Tell HTCondor about the Open Port

By default, HTCondor will use port 9618. If the Linux machine doesn’t already have HTCondor installed, and the admin is willing to open that port, then you don’t have to do anything. Otherwise, you’ll need to add a line like the following, replacing ‘9618’ with whatever port the administrator opened for you.

Activate the New Configuration

Force HTCondor to read the new configuration by restarting it:

6.3.2 Prepare your AWS account

Since v8.7.1, the condor_annex tool has included a -setup command which will prepare your AWS account.

Obtaining an Access Key

In order to use AWS, condor_annex needs a pair of security tokens (like a user name and password). Like a user name, the “access key” is (more or less) public information; the corresponding “secret key” is like a password and must be kept a secret. To help keep both halves secret, condor_annex (and HTCondor) are never told these keys directly; instead, you tell HTCondor which file to look in to find each one.

Create those two files now; we’ll tell you how to fill them in shortly. By convention, these files exist in your ~/.condor directory, which is where the -setup command will store the rest of the data it needs.

The last command ensures that only you can read or write to those files.

To donwload a new pair of security tokens for condor_annex to use, go to the IAM console at the following URL; log in if you need to:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?region=us-east-1#/users

The following instructions assume you are logged in as a user with the privilege to create new users. (The ‘root’ user for any account has this privilege; other accounts may as well.)

1. Click the “Add User” button.
2. Enter name in the User name box; “annex-user” is a fine choice.
3. Click the check box labelled “Programmatic access”.
4. Click the button labelled “Next: Permissions”.
5. Select “Attach existing policies directly”.
6. Type “AdministratorAccess” in the box labelled “Filter”.
7. Click the check box on the single line that will appear below (labelled “AdministratorAccess”).
8. Click the “Next: review” button (you may need to scroll down).
9. Click the “Create user” button.
10. From the line labelled “annex-user”, copy the value in the column labelled “Access key ID” to the file publicKeyFile.
11. On the line labelled “annex-user”, click the “Show” link in the column labelled “Secret access key”; copy the revealed value to the file privateKeyFile.
12. Hit the “Close” button.

The ‘annex-user’ now has full privileges to your account.

6.3.3 Configure condor_annex

The following command will setup your AWS account. It will create a number of persistent components, none of which will cost you anything to keep around. These components can take quite some time to create; condor_annex checks each for completion every ten seconds and prints an additional dot (past the first three) when it does so, to let you know that everything’s still working.

Checking the Setup

You can verify at this point (or any later time) that the setup procedure completed successfully by running the following command.

You’re ready to run condor_annex!

Undoing the Setup Command

There is not as yet a way to undo the setup command automatically, but it won’t cost you anything extra to leave your account setup for condor_annex indefinitely. If, however, you want to be tidy, you may delete the components setup created by going to the CloudFormation console at the following URL and deleting the entries whose names begin with ‘HTCondorAnnex-’:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-east-1#/stacks?filter=active

The setup procedure also creates an SSH key pair which may be useful for debugging; the private key was stored in ~/.condor/HTCondorAnnex-KeyPair.pem. To remove the corresponding public key from your AWS account, go to the key pair console at the following URL and delete the ‘HTCondorAnnex-KeyPair’ key:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1#KeyPairs:sort=keyName

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