2.0 Installing Condor

2.1 Installing Condor

First, download Condor. We have mirrored it locally so you can download it quickly. It is 146MB, so please be patient.
Download Condor (Link not active yet! Look in ~roy on ws-01.gs.unina.it)

You will get a file named condor-6.7.19-linux-x86-glibc23-dynamic.tar.gz. Let us pick apart the name a bit:

To install and start up Condor, you will take three steps. First, unpack Condor from this file and see what you get:

% condor-6.7.19-linux-x86-glibc23-dynamic.tar.gz
% tar xzf condor-6.7.19-linux-x86-glibc23-dynamic.tar.gz
% cd condor-6.7.19
% ls
DOC  INSTALL  LICENSE.TXT  README  condor_configure*  condor_install* examples/  release.tar

If you explore these files a bit, you'll notice it's a bit strange. All of the Condor binaries are contained in the release.tar file. We'll run condor_configure (not condor_install) to install condor into a subdirectory named condor.

The second step is to run condor_configure:

% ./condor_configure --install --make-personal-condor

[pause]

Condor has been installed into:
    /home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19

In order for Condor to work properly you must set your 
CONDOR_CONFIG environment variable to point to your 
Condor configuration file: 
    /home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/etc/condor_config 
before running Condor commands/daemons.

If you look at the contents of the directory, you'll see that there are now bin and sbin directories for Condor. You'll also see configuration files in etc and locallocal..<machinename>:

% ls -CF
bin/               condor_install*  etc/       include/  lib/      LICENSE.TXT   man/    release.tar  src/
condor_configure*  DOC              examples/  INSTALL   libexec/  local.ws-01/  README  sbin/

% ls etc
condor_config  examples/

% ls local.ws-01
condor_config.local  execute/  log/  spool/

If you tell Condor where to find condor_config, it will know how to find condor_config.local because it is listed in the file:

% grep "^LOCAL_CONFIG" etc/condor_config
LOCAL_CONFIG_FILE = /home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/local.ws-01/condor_config.local

Condor will read all of condor_config, then read all of condor_config.local. Anything in condor_config.local overrides what is in condor_config. In general, it doesn't matter where you put configuration variables. So tell Condor where to find the configuration file, and tell the shell how to find the Condor binaries. If you are using a shell other than bash, the commands may be different. You need to edit these commands to be appropriate for you--no copy and paste!

% export CONDOR_CONFIG=/home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/etc/condor_config

% export PATH=/home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/bin:${PATH}

% export PATH=/home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/sbin:${PATH}

% echo $CONDOR_CONFIG
/home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/etc/condor_config

% which condor_master
~/condor-6.7.19/sbin/condor_master

% condor_version
$CondorVersion: 6.7.19 May 10 2006 $
$CondorPlatform: I386-LINUX_RH9 $

You might be surprised that it reports RedHat 9 instead of CERN Scientific Linux 3.0.4 (the version of Linux installed on these computers). It is reporting the operating system that it was compiled on, not the operating system that is in use. Don't worry, the RedHat 9 binaries work just fine on Scientific Linux 3: we've done plenty of testing of that.

Now that you've installed Condor, you need to run it. This is easy, just run condor_master. Then check if Condor is running:

% condor_master

% ps -x
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
15652 ?        S      0:00 sshd: roy@pts/0
15654 pts/0    S      0:00 -bash
15824 ?        S      0:00 condor_master
15825 ?        S      0:00 condor_collector -f
15826 ?        S      0:00 condor_negotiator -f
15827 ?        S      0:00 condor_schedd -f
15828 ?        S      0:04 condor_startd -f
15846 pts/0    R      0:00 ps -x

Most excellent! You have installed Condor and gotten it running.

The output you see from ps may be slightly different than ours, but as long as it lists all of those Condor programs, it's okay. Let's look at what we see:

condor_master: This program runs constantly and ensures that all other parts of Condor are running. If they hang or crash, it restarts them.

condor_collector: This program is part of the Condor central manager. It collects information about all computers in the pool as well as which users want to run jobs. It is what normally responds to the condor_status command.

condor_negotiator: This program is part of the Condor central manager. It decides what jobs should be run where.

condor_startd: If this program is running, it allows jobs to be started up on this computer--that is, your computer is an "execute machine". This advertises your computer to the central manager (more on that later, but in this case it's also your computer) so that it knows about this computer. It will start up the jobs that run.

condor_schedd If this program is running, it allows jobs to be submitted from this computer--that is, your computer is a "submit machine". This will advertise jobs to the central manager so that it knows about them. It will contact a condor_startd on other execute machines for each job that needs to be started.

condor_shadow (Not shown above) For each job that has been submitted from this computer, there is one condor_shadow running. It will watch over the job as it runs remotely. In some cases it will provide some assistance (see the standard universe later.) You may or may not see any condor_shadow processes running, depending on what is happening on the computer when you try it out.

We have a graphic representation of these daemons, drawn by Sarah Miller, age 12.

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2.2 Condor_q

You can find out what jobs have been submitted on your computer with the condor_q command:

% condor_q

-- Submitter: ws-01.gs.unina.it : <192.167.1.21:33443> : ws-01.gs.unina.it
 ID      OWNER            SUBMITTED     RUN_TIME ST PRI SIZE CMD               

0 jobs; 0 idle, 0 running, 0 held

Nothing is running right now. If something was running, you would see output like this:

% condor_q

-- Submitter: royal01.cs.wisc.edu : <128.105.112.101:32775> : royal01.cs.wisc.edu
 ID      OWNER            SUBMITTED     RUN_TIME ST PRI SIZE CMD               
4589.0   doronn          3/30 18:07  19+09:26:01 I  0   0.0  go1               
5140.0   araddan         7/18 15:59   8+08:16:47 I  0   0.0  .condor_run.23359 
5145.0   araddan         7/18 17:22   0+21:29:41 I  0   0.0  matlab-script.txt 
6041.0   grishas        12/7  18:41   7+08:03:25 R  0   45.7 a.out             
6042.0   grishas        12/7  18:42   8+07:47:14 R  0   45.7 a.out             
6044.0   grishas        12/9  11:15   6+17:14:46 R  0   45.7 a.out         

• ID: We can see each jobs cluster and process number. For the first job, the cluster is 4589 and the process is 0. In some cases, we may have many processes (jobs) within a single cluster.
• OWNER: We can see who owns the job.
• SUBMITTED: We can see when the job was submitted
• RUN_TIME: We can see how long the job has been running.
• ST: We can see what the current state of the job is. I is idle, R is running.
• PRI: We can see the memory consumption of the job.
• CMD: We can see the program that is being executed.

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2.3 Condor_status

You can find out what computers are in your Condor pool. (A pool is similar to a cluster, but it doesn't have the connotation that all computers are dedicated full-time to computation: some may be desktop computers owned by users.) To look, use condor_status:

% condor_status

Name          OpSys       Arch   State      Activity   LoadAv Mem   ActvtyTime

vm1@ws-01.gs. LINUX       INTEL  Unclaimed  Idle       0.150   500  0+00:00:04
vm2@ws-01.gs. LINUX       INTEL  Unclaimed  Idle       0.000   500  0+00:00:05

                     Total Owner Claimed Unclaimed Matched Preempting Backfill

         INTEL/LINUX     2     0       0         2       0          0        0

               Total     2     0       0         2       0          0
               0

Right now, we just see our local computer, since you are just running a personal Condor. It appears as two computers, because Condor thinks that there are two processes, due to hyperthreading. Later on, you will see many more computers. Let's look at exactly what you can see:

• Name The name of the computer. Sometimes this gets chopped off, like above.
• OpSys The operating system, though not at the granularity you may wish: It says "Linux" instead of which distribution and version of Linux.
• Arch The architecture, such as INTEL or PPC.
• State The state is often Claimed (when it is running a Condor job) or Unclaimed (when it is not running a Condor job). It can be in a few other states as well, such as Matched.
• Activity This is usually something like Busy or Idle. Sometimes you may see a computer that is Claimed, but no job has yet begun on the computer. Then it is Claimed/Idle. Hopefully this doesn't last very long.
• LoadAv The load average on the computer.
• Mem The computers memory in megabytes.
• ActvtyTime How long the computer has been doing what it's been doing.

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2.4 Configuring Condor

Look at the condor_config.local, which is located in condor-6.7.19/local.<your-computer-name>. It was created automatically, so it's not as well commented as condor_config. One thing to notice is the START expression. For you, it should be "TRUE". This means that Condor will accept jobs (from any authorized user) at any time. This is where you can change Condor to say things like, "Don't run jobs if someone is using the computer" or "Don't run jobs between 8am and 5pm." Look in condor_config to see some examples of this sort of configuration. These examples are not used because they are overridden in condor_config.local. You can see which version of START is being used with the condor_config_val command:

% condor_config_val -v START
START: TRUE
  Defined in '/home/users/roy/condor-6.7.19/local.ws-01/condor_config.local', line 82.

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Next: Submitting your first Condor job