Customizing the Startd Policy

Now, we're going to change the global policy for the pool to allow jobs to always run so we can see some test jobs actually run.

First, lets look at how the existing START expression is defined in the config file:

% egrep "^START.*:" ~/condor_config

Now, lets see how this expression and all the macros are expanded by Condor:

% condor_config_val START

This policy prevents jobs from starting on any machine where KeyboardIdle, the value in seconds since the last time someone pressed a key, is less than 15 * 60 (15 minutes).

If you look at the output from condor_status, you will see that most machines are in the "Owner" state:

% condor_status

Now, the instructor will change the START expression to always allow jobs to run, regardless of keyboard activity, by setting it to:

START : True

At the same time, we'll also set SUSPEND and PREEMPT to False to prevent jobs that start from getting suspended or preempted:

SUSPEND : False
PREEMPT : False

To make this change take effect, you must send a condor_reconfig to each machine.

% condor_reconfig

As an administrator, you can easily send a reconfig to all machines in the pool with the following command (again, using the UNIX backtick-method):

% condor_reconfig `condor_status -master`

If you examine your MasterLog, each of you will see many entries about "PERMISSION DENIED", since we have configured HOSTALLOW_ADMINISTRATOR to only include the Central Manager and the local host for each machine in this pool.

% tail -20 ~/log/MasterLog

Now, each machine will be Unclaimed, since they are all willing to run jobs:

% condor_status

We're done!