Glossary

AP (Access Point)

An Access Point (AP) is the machine where users place jobs to be queued to be run. It usually runs the condor_schedd and other daemons.

Classad

A classad is a set of key value pairs. Every object in an HTCSS is described by a classad. Classad values can also be an expression, which can be evaluated in the context of another classad, in order to provide matching or ranking policy.

CM (Central Manager)

The Central Manager (CM) is the machine with the central in-memory database (condor_collector) of all the services, an accountant and condor_negotiator.

Daemon

A long-running process often operating in the background. An older term for “service”. The condor_master, condor_collector, condor_schedd, condor_starter and condor_shadow are some of the daemon in HTCSS.

EP (Execution Point)

The Execution Point (EP), sometimes called the worker node is where jobs run. It is managed by the condor_startd daemon, which is responsible for dividing all of the resources the machine into slot.

Glidein

The HTCondor Software Suite does not provide glideins as a first class entity itself, but implements tools that users can build glideins from. A glidein is a set of scripts which creates a short-lived, usually unprivileged EP that runs as a job under HTCondor or some other batch system. This glidein EP then reports to a different batch pool that end users can submit jobs to. Glideins are one way to build a larger HTCondor pool from different sets of resources that a user or group may have access to. One advantage of glideins is that they provide late binding, that is, glideins may sit idle in a foreign queue for a very long time, but an idle user job does not select an EP to run on until it is ready to accept work. One example glidein system is GlideinWMS, though there are many others.

Job

Job has a very specific meaning in the HTCSS. It is the atomic unit of work in HTCSS. A job is defined by a job classad, which is usually created by condor_submit and a submit file. A job can have defined input files, which HTCSS will transfer to the EP. One or more operating system processes can run inside a job. Every job is a member of a cluster of jobs, which have cluster id. Each job also has a “proc id”. The job id uniquely identifies every job on an AP, the id is the cluster id followed by a dot followed by the proc id.

Sandbox

Every job has a sandbox associated with it, which is a set of files. The input sandbox is the set of files the job needs as input, and should be transferred to the EP when the job starts. As the job runs, any scratch files created by the job are added to the sandbox. If the job is evicted after running, and WhenToTransferFiles is set to OnExitOrEvict, this sandbox is saved to the AP in the spool directory, and the sandbox is restored to the EP when the job restarts. Any non-input files in the sandbox that exist when the job exits of its own accord are the “output sandbox”, which is transferred back to the AP on successful job completion.

Slot

The slot is the location on the EP where the job runs. The condor_starter creates a slot, with sufficient Cpu, memory, disk, and other resources for the job to run. The resource usage of a job running in a slot is monitored and reported up to the condor_startd, and back to the AP, and, depending on configuration, may be enforced, such that a job that uses too many resources will be evicted from the machine.

Universe

A type of job, describing some of the services it may need on an EP. The default universe, with the minimal additional services needed, is called “vanilla”. Other universes include Container, Grid, and VM.

Workflow

A set, possibly ordered, of activities necessary to complete a larger task. In high-throughput computing, each activity is a job. For example, consider the task of searching a large genome for a specific pattern. This might be implemented with 1,000 independent jobs, each searching a subset of the full genome. A different workflow might assemble a genome from sequences. Workflows may be composed; a third workflow compose the first two, so that it assembles the genome from sequences, then searches it for a pattern. The requirements for jobs (or workflows) to run before or after others may be represented by a directed acyclic graph [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph] (DAG) See the condor_dagman (DAGMan Introduction) to automatically execute a workflow represented as a dag.