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.

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

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

Links

• Detailed Condor documentation is also available on the website here