Windows (as Administrator)

Installation of HTCondor must be done by a user with administrator privileges. We have provided quickstart instructions below to walk you through a single-node HTCondor installation using the HTCondor Windows installer GUI.

For more information about the installation options, or how to use the installer in unattended batch mode, see the complete Windows Installer guide.

It is possible to manually install HTCondor on Windows, without the provided MSI program, but we strongly discourage this unless you have a specific need for this approach and have extensive HTCondor experience.

Quickstart Installation Instructions

To download the latest HTCondor Windows Installer:

Go to the current channel download site.
Click on the second-latest version. (The latest version should always be the under-development version and will only have daily builds.)
Click on the release folder.
Click on the file ending in .msi (usually the first one).

Start the installer by double clicking on the MSI file once it’s downloaded. Then follow the directions below for each option.

If HTCondor is already installed.

If HTCondor has been previously installed, a dialog box will appear before the installation of HTCondor proceeds. The question asks if you wish to preserve your current HTCondor configuration files. Answer yes or no, as appropriate.

If you answer yes, your configuration files will not be changed, and you will proceed to the point where the new binaries will be installed.

If you answer no, then there will be a second question that asks if you want to use answers given during the previous installation as default answers.

STEP 1: License Agreement.

Agree to the HTCondor license agreement.

STEP 2: HTCondor Pool Configuration.

Choose the option to create a new pool and enter a name.

STEP 3: This Machine’s Roles.

Check the “submit jobs” box. From the list of execution options, choose “always run jobs”.

STEP 4: The Account Domain.

Skip this entry.

STEP 5: E-mail Settings.

Specify the desired email address(es), if any.

STEP 6: Java Settings.

If this entry is already set, accept it. Otherwise, skip it.

STEP 7: Access Permission Settings.

Accept the default values. You can change these later by modifying the configuration files.

STEP 8: VM Universe Setting.

Disable the vm universe.

STEP 9: Choose Destination Folder

Accept the default settings.

This should complete the installation process. The installer will have automatically started HTCondor in the background and you do not need to restart Windows for HTCondor to work.

Open a command prompt to follow the next set of instructions.

Verifying a Single-Machine Installation

You can easily check to see if the installation procedure succeeded. The following commands should complete without errors, producing output that looks like the corresponding example.

condor_status

Name                 OpSys      Arch   State     Activity     LoadAv Mem   Actv

slot1@azaphrael.org  LINUX      X86_64 Unclaimed Benchmarking  0.000 2011  0+00
slot2@azaphrael.org  LINUX      X86_64 Unclaimed Idle          0.000 2011  0+00
slot3@azaphrael.org  LINUX      X86_64 Unclaimed Idle          0.000 2011  0+00
slot4@azaphrael.org  LINUX      X86_64 Unclaimed Idle          0.000 2011  0+00

           Total Owner Claimed Unclaimed Matched Preempting Backfill  Drain

X86_64/LINUX    4     0       0        4        0          0        0      0
       Total    4     0       0        4        0          0        0      0

condor_q

-- Schedd: azaphrael.org : <184.60.25.78:34585?... @ 11/11/20 14:44:06
OWNER BATCH_NAME      SUBMITTED   DONE   RUN    IDLE   HOLD  TOTAL JOB_IDS

Total for query: 0 jobs; 0 completed, 0 removed, 0 idle, 0 running, 0 held, 0 suspended
Total for all users: 0 jobs; 0 completed, 0 removed, 0 idle, 0 running, 0 held, 0 suspended

If both commands worked, the installation likely succeeded.

Where to Go from Here

For a brief introduction to running jobs with HTCondor, see the Users’ Quick Start Guide.
If you’re looking to set up a multi-machine pool, go to the Administrative Quick Start Guide.

Setting Up a Whole Pool with Windows

Follow the instructions above through Step 1. Then, customize the installation as follows:

STEP 2: HTCondor Pool Configuration.

Create a new pool only on the machine you’ve chosen as their central manager. See the Administrative Quick Start Guide. Otherwise, choose the option to join an existing pool and enter the name or IP address of the central manager.

STEP 3: This Machine’s Roles.

Check the “submit jobs” box to select the submit role, or choose “always run jobs” to select the execute role.

STEP 4: The Account Domain.

Enter the same name on all submit-role machines. This helps ensure that a user can’t get more resources by logging in to more than one machine.

STEP 5: E-mail Settings.

Specify the desired email address(es), if any.

STEP 6: Java Settings.

If this entry is already set, accept it. Otherwise, skip it.

Experienced users who know they want to use the java universe should instead enter the path to the Java executable on the machine, if it isn’t already set, or they want to use a different one.

To disable use of the java universe, leave the field blank.

STEP 7: Access Permission Settings.

Machines within the HTCondor pool will need various types of access permission. The three categories of permission that can be set here are read, write, and administrator. The values can be usernames, hostnames or IP address ranges, Wild cards and macros are permitted. It is recommended that you accept the defaults here and change the values later as needed by modifying the HTCondor configuration files.

Read
Read access allows a machine to obtain information about HTCondor such as the status of machines in the pool and the job queues. If all of your HTCondor machines and users are in a single DNS domain or IP Address range, setting this to *.domain an IP address range with wildcards is a good choice. See ALLOW_READ

Write
Write access is for submitting jobs to the Schedd. Setting this to * will allow any user that can login to the machine submit jobs. See ALLOW_WRITE

Administrator
Administrator access is for starting and stopping the daemons and sending administrative commands such as reconfig and drain. By default the installer will give this permission to the Windows user that runs the installer and to the Windows Adminstrator account. See ALLOW_ADMINISTRATOR

For more details on these access permissions, and others that can be manually changed in your configuration file, please see the section titled Setting Up Security in HTCondor in the Authorization section.

STEP 8: VM Universe Setting.

Disable the vm universe.

Experienced users with VMWare and Perl already installed may enable the vm universe.

STEP 9: Choose Destination Folder

Experienced users may change the default installation path (c:\Condor), but we don’t recommend doing so. Certain jobs may not run if the installation path has a space in it.