Proposals:Condor

Introduction

Condor is an open source distributed computing software framework. It can be used to manage workload on a dedicated cluster of computers, and/or to farm out work to idle desktop computers. Condor is a cross-platform system that can be run on Unix and Windows operating system. Condor is a complex and flexible system that can jobs in serial and parallel mode. For parallel jobs, it supports the standard MPI standard. This Wiki page is dedicated to document our working experience using Condor.

Downloading Condor

Different versions of condor can be downloaded from here. This documentation focuses on our experience installing/configure Condor Version 7.2.0. Detail documentation for this version can be found here

Preparation

As Condor is a flexible system, there are different ways of configuring condor in your computing infrastructure. Hence, before starting installation, make the following important decisions.

1. What machine will be the central manager?
2. What machines should be allowed to submit jobs?
3. Will Condor run as root or not?
4. Do I have enough disk space for Condor?
5. Do I need MPI configured?

Condor can be installed as either a manager node, a execute or a submit node. Or any combination of these ones. See The Different Roles a Machine Can Play

• Manager: There can be only one central manager for your pool. The machine is the collector of information, and the negotiator between resources and resource request

• Execute: Any machine in your pool (including the Central Manager) can be configured to execute Condor jobs.

• Submit: Any machine in your pool (including the Central Manager) can be configured to allow Condor jobs to be submitted.

Installation

Unix

The official instructions on how to install Condor in Unix can be found here . Below we present some of tweaks we had to do to get it to work on our Unix machines.

Prerequisites

• Be sure the server has a hostname and a domain name

 hostname

should return mymachine.mydomain.com (or .org, .edu, etc.) , if it only returns mymachine, then your server does not have a fully qualified domain name.

To set the domain name, edit /etc/hosts and add your domain name to the first line. You might see something like

10.171.1.124 mymachine

change this to

10.171.1.124 mymachine.mydomain.com

Also edit /etc/hostname to be

mymachine.mydomain.com

Then reboot so that the hostname changes take effect.

• Make sure the following packages are installed:

apt-get install mailutils

• Make sure the server has a hostname and a domainname.

• Download the package condor-7.2.X-linux-x86_64-rhel5-dynamic.tar.gz ( Platform RHEL 5 Intel x86/64 ) See http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/downloads-v2/download.pl

For example, you could run a similar command to download the desired package:

wget http://parrot.cs.wisc.edu//symlink/20090223121502/7/7.2/7.2.1/fec3779ab6d2d556027f6ae4baffc0d6/condor-7.2.X-linux-x86_64-rhel5-dynamic.tar.gz

• You should install Condor as root or with a user having equivalent privileges

Configuring a Condor Manager in Unix

• Make sure the condor archive is in your home directory (/home/kitware), then untar it.

cd ~
tar -xzvf condor-7.2.X-linux-x86_64-rhel5-dynamic.tar.gz
cd ./condor-7.2.X

• If not yet done, create a condor user

adduser condor

• Run the installation scripts condor_install

./condor_install --install=. --prefix=/root/condor --local-dir=/home/condor/localcondor

After running the installation script, you should get the following output:

Installing Condor from /root/condor-7.2.X to /root/condor

Condor has been installed into:
    /root/condor

Configured condor using these configuration files:
  global: /root/condor/etc/condor_config
  local:  /home/condor/localcondor/condor_config.local
Created scripts which can be sourced by users to setup their
Condor environment variables.  These are:
   sh: /root/condor/condor.sh
  csh: /root/condor/condor.csh

• Switch to the directory where condor is now installed

cd /root/condor

• Edit /etc/environment and update PATH variable to include the directory /root/condor/bin and /root/condor/sbin

PATH="/root/condor/bin:/root/condor/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"

• Add the following line

CONDOR_CONFIG="/root/condor/etc/condor_config"

• Save file and apply the change by running

source /etc/environment

• Make sure CONDOR_CONFIG and PATH are set correctly

root@rigel:~$ echo $PATH
/root/condor/bin:/root/condor/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

root@rigel:~$ echo $CONDOR_CONFIG
/root/condor/etc/condor_config

• You can know logout / login or even restart he machine, and you should be able check that CONDOR_CONFIG and PATH environment variables are still set.

• Edit condor manager config_file and update the line as referenced below:

cd ~/condor
vi ./etc/condor_config

RELEASE_DIR              = /root/condor
LOCAL_DIR                = /home/condor/localcondor
CONDOR_ADMIN             = email@website.com
UID_DOMAIN               = website.com
FILESYSTEM_DOMAIN        = website.com
HOSTALLOW_READ           = *.website.com
HOSTALLOW_WRITE          = *.website.com
HOSTALLOW_CONFIG         = $(CONDOR_HOST)

• In order to allow Midas to run condor command, create a link to /root/condor/etc/condor_config into /home/condor

cd /home/condor
ln -s /home/condor/etc/condor_config condor_config

Configuring a Executer/Submitter in Unix

The different files allowing the server to be also used as a condor submitter/executer have been automatically updated while running the installation script condor_install. Nevertheless, you still need to update its configuration file.

• Edit condor node config_file.local and update the line as referenced below:

vi /home/condor/condor_config.local

CONDOR_ADMIN        = email@website.com

If the installation went well, the line having UID_DOMAIN and FILESYSTEM_DOMAIN should already be set to website.com

Windows

The official documentation on how to install Condor in Windows can be found here

Running Condor

The official user's manual on how to perform distributed computing here

Links

• Detailed Condor documentation is also available on the website here