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.
- What machine will be the central manager?
- What machines should be allowed to submit jobs?
- Will Condor run as root or not?
- Do I have enough disk space for Condor?
- 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 [ http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/manual/v7.2/2_Users_Manual.html here]
Additional Notes
Links
- Detailed Condor documentation is also available on the website here
