Using condor_annex for the First Time

This guide assumes that you already have an AWS account, as well as a log-in account on a Linux machine with a public address and a system administrator who’s willing to open a port for you. All the terminal commands (shown in a box) and file edits (show in a box whose first line begins with a # and names a file) take place on the Linux machine. You can perform the web-based steps from wherever is convenient, although it will save you some copying if you run the browser on the Linux machine.

If your Linux machine will be an EC2 instance, read Using Instance Credentials first; by taking some care in how you start the instance, you can save yourself some drudgery.

Before using condor_annex for the first time, you’ll have to do three things:

  1. install a personal HTCondor

  2. prepare your AWS account

  3. configure condor_annex

Instructions for each follow.

Install a Personal HTCondor

We recommend that you install a personal HTCondor to make use of condor_annex; it’s simpler to configure that way. Follow the Hand-Installation of HTCondor on a Single Machine with User Privileges instructions. Make sure you install HTCondor version 8.7.8 or later.

Once you have a working personal HTCondor installation, continue with the additional setup instructions below, that are specific to using condor_annex.

In the following instructions, it is assumed that the local installation has been done in the folder ~/condor-8.7.8. Change this path depending on your HTCondor version and how you followed the installation instructions.

Configure Public Interface

The default personal HTCondor uses the “loopback” interface, which basically just means it won’t talk to anyone other than itself. For condor_annex to work, your personal HTCondor needs to use the Linux machine’s public interface. In most cases, that’s as simple as adding the following lines:

# ~/condor-8.7.8/local/condor_config.local

NETWORK_INTERFACE = *
CONDOR_HOST = $(FULL_HOSTNAME)

Restart HTCondor to force the changes to take effect:

$ condor_restart
Sent "Restart" command to local master

To verify that this change worked, repeat the steps under the Install a Personal HTCondor section. Then proceed onto the next section.

Configure a Pool Password

In this section, you’ll configure your personal HTCondor to use a pool password. This is a simple but effective method of securing HTCondor’s communications to AWS.

Add the following lines:

# ~/condor-8.7.8/local/condor_config.local

SEC_PASSWORD_FILE = $(LOCAL_DIR)/condor_pool_password

SEC_DAEMON_INTEGRITY = REQUIRED
SEC_DAEMON_AUTHENTICATION = REQUIRED
SEC_DAEMON_AUTHENTICATION_METHODS = PASSWORD
SEC_NEGOTIATOR_INTEGRITY = REQUIRED
SEC_NEGOTIATOR_AUTHENTICATION = REQUIRED
SEC_NEGOTIATOR_AUTHENTICATION_METHODS = PASSWORD
SEC_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION_METHODS = FS, PASSWORD
ALLOW_DAEMON = condor_pool@*

You also need to run the following command, which prompts you to enter a password:

$ condor_store_cred -c add -f `condor_config_val SEC_PASSWORD_FILE`
Enter password:

Enter a password.

Tell HTCondor about the Open Port

By default, HTCondor will use port 9618. If the Linux machine doesn’t already have HTCondor installed, and the admin is willing to open that port, then you don’t have to do anything. Otherwise, you’ll need to add a line like the following, replacing ‘9618’ with whatever port the administrator opened for you.

# ~/condor-8.7.8/local/condor_config.local

COLLECTOR_HOST = $(FULL_HOSTNAME):9618

Activate the New Configuration

Force HTCondor to read the new configuration by restarting it:

$ condor_restart

Prepare your AWS account

Since v8.7.1, the condor_annex tool has included a -setup command which will prepare your AWS account.

Using Instance Credentials

If you will not be running condor_annex on an EC2 instance, skip to Obtaining an Access Key.

When you start an instance on EC2 1, you can grant it some of your AWS privileges, for instance, for starting instances. This (usually) means that any user logged into the instance can, for instance, start instances (as you). A given collection of privileges is called an “instance profile”; a full description of them is outside the scope of this document. If, however, you’ll be the only person who can log into the instance you’re creating and on which you will be running condor_annex, it may be simpler to start an instance with your privileges than to deal with Obtaining an Access Key.

You will need a privileged instance profile; if you don’t already have one, you will only need to create it once. When launching an instance with the EC2 console, step 3 (labelled ‘Configure Instance Details’) includes an entry for ‘IAM role’; the AWS web interface creates the corresponding instance profile for you automatically. If you’ve already created a privileged role, select it here and carry on launching your instance as usual. If you haven’t:

  1. Follow the ‘Create new IAM role’ link.

  2. Click the ‘Create Role’ button.

  3. Select ‘EC2’ under “the service that will use this role”.

  4. Click the ‘Next: Permissions’ button.

  5. Select ‘Administrator Access’ and click the ‘Next: Tags’ button.

  6. Click the ‘Next: Review’ button.

  7. Enter a role name; ‘HTCondorAnnexRole’ is fine.

  8. Click the ‘Create role’ button.

When you switch back to the previous tab, you may need to click the circular arrow (refresh) icon before you can select the role name you entered in the second-to-last step.

If you’d like step-by-step instructions for creating a HTCondor-in-the-Cloud, see HTCondor in the Cloud.

You can skip to Configure condor_annex once you’ve completed these steps.

Obtaining an Access Key

In order to use AWS, condor_annex needs a pair of security tokens (like a user name and password). Like a user name, the “access key” is (more or less) public information; the corresponding “secret key” is like a password and must be kept a secret. To help keep both halves secret, condor_annex (and HTCondor) are never told these keys directly; instead, you tell HTCondor which file to look in to find each one.

Create those two files now; we’ll tell you how to fill them in shortly. By convention, these files exist in your ~/.condor directory, which is where the -setup command will store the rest of the data it needs.

$ mkdir ~/.condor
$ cd ~/.condor
$ touch publicKeyFile privateKeyFile
$ chmod 600 publicKeyFile privateKeyFile

The last command ensures that only you can read or write to those files.

To donwload a new pair of security tokens for condor_annex to use, go to the IAM console at the following URL; log in if you need to:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home?region=us-east-1#/users

The following instructions assume you are logged in as a user with the privilege to create new users. (The ‘root’ user for any account has this privilege; other accounts may as well.)

  1. Click the “Add User” button.

  2. Enter name in the User name box; “annex-user” is a fine choice.

  3. Click the check box labelled “Programmatic access”.

  4. Click the button labelled “Next: Permissions”.

  5. Select “Attach existing policies directly”.

  6. Type “AdministratorAccess” in the box labelled “Filter”.

  7. Click the check box on the single line that will appear below (labelled “AdministratorAccess”).

  8. Click the “Next: review” button (you may need to scroll down).

  9. Click the “Create user” button.

  10. From the line labelled “annex-user”, copy the value in the column labelled “Access key ID” to the file publicKeyFile.

  11. On the line labelled “annex-user”, click the “Show” link in the column labelled “Secret access key”; copy the revealed value to the file privateKeyFile.

  12. Hit the “Close” button.

The ‘annex-user’ now has full privileges to your account.

Configure condor_annex

The following command will setup your AWS account. It will create a number of persistent components, none of which will cost you anything to keep around. These components can take quite some time to create; condor_annex checks each for completion every ten seconds and prints an additional dot (past the first three) when it does so, to let you know that everything’s still working.

$ condor_annex -setup
Creating configuration bucket (this takes less than a minute)....... complete.
Creating Lambda functions (this takes about a minute)........ complete.
Creating instance profile (this takes about two minutes)................... complete.
Creating security group (this takes less than a minute)..... complete.
Setup successful.

Checking the Setup

You can verify at this point (or any later time) that the setup procedure completed successfully by running the following command.

$ condor_annex -check-setup
Checking for configuration bucket... OK.
Checking for Lambda functions... OK.
Checking for instance profile... OK.
Checking for security group... OK.

You’re ready to run condor_annex!

Undoing the Setup Command

There is not as yet a way to undo the setup command automatically, but it won’t cost you anything extra to leave your account setup for condor_annex indefinitely. If, however, you want to be tidy, you may delete the components setup created by going to the CloudFormation console at the following URL and deleting the entries whose names begin with ‘HTCondorAnnex-‘:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/home?region=us-east-1#/stacks?filter=active

The setup procedure also creates an SSH key pair which may be useful for debugging; the private key was stored in ~/.condor/HTCondorAnnex-KeyPair.pem. To remove the corresponding public key from your AWS account, go to the key pair console at the following URL and delete the ‘HTCondorAnnex-KeyPair’ key:

https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home?region=us-east-1#KeyPairs:sort=keyName

Footnotes

1

You may assign an intance profile to an EC2 instance when you launch it, or at any subsequent time, through the AWS web console (or other interfaces with which you may be familiar). If you start the instance using HTCondor’s EC2 universe, you may specify the IAM instance profile with the ec2_iam_profile_name or ec2_iam_profile_arn submit commands.