Local Installation of Condor

This page describes the procedure for installing Condor on a Fedora 13 system from the Condor source code. The Fedora repository version of Condor is a few versions behind and has a few features, such as Checkpointing, disabled. For these reasons, we chose to install Condor from scratch using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux version of the source code.

Using this type of installation and configuration, the standard location for the following files are as follows:

• Global Configuration File: /etc/condor/condor_config
• Local Configuration File: /var/lib/condor/condor_config.local
• Release Directory (RELEASE_DIR): /usr/local/condor/
• Log Files: /var/lib/condor/log/
• Binaries (Actual Locations¹⁾)
  • /usr/local/condor/bin/
  • /usr/local/condor/sbin/
• Example MPI Submission Script: /usr/local/condor/etc/examples/mp1script

sudo ./condor_configure --type=manager,submit,execute --local-dir=/var/lib/condor --install-dir=/usr/local/condor --owner=condor --install --verbose

export CONDOR_CONFIG=/usr/local/condor/etc/condor_config

I tried to put the binaries in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin, but sudo's PATH didn't include /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin, which made it inconvenient to run under sudo.

ln -s /usr/local/condor/bin/* /usr/bin/
ln -s /usr/local/condor/sbin/* /usr/sbin/
sudo chown condor:condor /usr/local/condor/bin/*
sudo chown condor:condor /usr/local/condor/sbin/*

The Condor installation comes with example boot, configuration, and submission scripts. The included example boot script is compatible with Fedora 13's system services system, so registering it with the system allows Condor to automatically start when the computer is booted. To add the script to the system and register it, do the following:

sudo cp /usr/local/condor/etc/examples/condor.boot.generic /etc/init.d/condor
sudo chmod 774 /etc/init.d/condor
sudo chkconfig --add condor
sudo chkconfig --level 45 condor on

To verify the settings, run the following command and make sure levels 4 and 5 are on:

chkconfig --list | fgrep condor

In order for workers in a Condor pool to talk to the Condor master machine, that machine needs to have the network port 9618 open to accept incoming connections. If you have a firewall enabled on the Condor master machine, you will need to configure your Firewall to allow Condor to listen to the port for incoming communication. To do this in Fedora, run²⁾

sudo system-config-firewall

If the firewall is enabled³⁾, click “Other Ports” on the left side of the window. On the right, click the “Add” button. Scroll down to port 9618 and add the entry with “tcp” listed as its protocol. Click “Okay”. Do the same for port 9618 except add the entry with “udp” listed as its protocol. At the top of the window, click “Apply”. Click “Yes” in the conformation window. Your firewall now has port 9618 open for incoming tcp/udp traffic.

Back in the olden days, Condor used to be able to easily do idle detection based on the device files in the /dev/ folder. This is great if the system has a PS/2 keyboard and (God forbid!) a serial mouse, but now with USB keyboards and mice, doing idle detection based on these USB device files is feeble, probably since USB device files vary by the make and model of the keyboard or mouse. Fortunately, Condor is now able to latch on to the X11 window manager and poll it for activity. Condor needs to run an extra daemon to do this, known as the condor_kbdd daemon.

If Condor were installed from a package manager, the condor_kbdd daemon wouldn't be included since it is considered a separate software package. No big deal. Installing Condor from its source code means that the condor_kbdd program comes with the whole bundle, which is nice. Although the condor_kbdd daemon is installed, it is not activated in Condor by default. In order to activate the daemon, simply add KBDD as an item in the DAEMON_LIST configuration variable as a comma-separated list. If the condor_kbdd daemon is correctly installed, Condor will start the daemon and latch it on to the X11 window server to allow for proper idle detection of any and all applicable input devices. ⁴⁾