Windows Installer

This section includes detailed information about the options offered by the Windows Installer, including how to run it unattended for automated installations. If you’re not an experienced user, you may wish to follow the quick start guide’s instructions instead.

Detailed Installation Instructions Using the MSI Program

This section describes the different HTCondor Installer options in greater detail.

STEP 1: License Agreement.

The first step in installing HTCondor is a welcome screen and license agreement. You are reminded that it is best to run the installation when no other Windows programs are running. If you need to close other Windows programs, it is safe to cancel the installation and close them. You are asked to agree to the license. Answer yes or no. If you should disagree with the License, the installation will not continue.

Also fill in name and company information, or use the defaults as given.

STEP 2: HTCondor Pool Configuration.

The HTCondor configuration needs to be set based upon if this is a new pool or to join an existing one. Choose the appropriate radio button.

For a new pool, enter a chosen name for the pool. To join an existing pool, enter the host name of the central manager of the pool.

STEP 3: This Machine’s Roles.

Each machine within an HTCondor pool can either submit jobs or execute submitted jobs, or both submit and execute jobs. A check box determines if this machine will be a submit point for the pool.

A set of radio buttons determines the ability and configuration of the ability to execute jobs. There are four choices:

  • Do not run jobs on this machine. This machine will not execute HTCondor jobs.

  • Always run jobs and never suspend them.

  • Run jobs when the keyboard has been idle for 15 minutes.

  • Run jobs when the keyboard has been idle for 15 minutes, and the CPU is idle.

If you are setting up HTCondor as a single installation for testing, make sure you check the box to make the machine a submit point, and also choose the second option from the list above.

For a machine that is to execute jobs and the choice is one of the last two in the list, HTCondor needs to further know what to do with the currently running jobs. There are two choices:

  • Keep the job in memory and continue when the machine meets the condition chosen for when to run jobs.

  • Restart the job on a different machine.

This choice involves a trade off. Restarting the job on a different machine is less intrusive on the workstation owner than leaving the job in memory for a later time. A suspended job left in memory will require swap space, which could be a scarce resource. Leaving a job in memory, however, has the benefit that accumulated run time is not lost for a partially completed job.

STEP 4: The Account Domain.

Enter the machine’s accounting (or UID) domain. On this version of HTCondor for Windows, this setting is only used for user priorities (see the User Priorities and Negotiation section) and to form a default e-mail address for the user.

STEP 5: E-mail Settings.

Various parts of HTCondor will send e-mail to an HTCondor administrator if something goes wrong and requires human attention. Specify the e-mail address and the SMTP relay host of this administrator. Please pay close attention to this e-mail, since it will indicate problems in the HTCondor pool.

STEP 6: Java Settings.

In order to run jobs in the java universe, HTCondor must have the path to the jvm executable on the machine. The installer will search for and list the jvm path, if it finds one. If not, enter the path. To disable use of the java universe, leave the field blank.

STEP 7: Host Permission Settings.

Machines within the HTCondor pool will need various types of access permission. The three categories of permission are read, write, and administrator. Enter the machines or domain to be given access permissions, or use the defaults provided. Wild cards and macros are permitted.

Read

Read access allows a machine to obtain information about HTCondor such as the status of machines in the pool and the job queues. All machines in the pool should be given read access. In addition, giving read access to *.cs.wisc.edu will allow the HTCondor team to obtain information about the HTCondor pool, in the event that debugging is needed.

Write

All machines in the pool should be given write access. It allows the machines you specify to send information to your local HTCondor daemons, for example, to start an HTCondor job. Note that for a machine to join the HTCondor pool, it must have both read and write access to all of the machines in the pool.

Administrator

A machine with administrator access will be allowed more extended permission to do things such as change other user’s priorities, modify the job queue, turn HTCondor services on and off, and restart HTCondor. The central manager should be given administrator access and is the default listed. This setting is granted to the entire machine, so care should be taken not to make this too open.

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.

A radio button determines whether this machine will be configured to run vm universe jobs utilizing VMware. In addition to having the VMware Server installed, HTCondor also needs Perl installed. The resources available for vm universe jobs can be tuned with these settings, or the defaults listed can be used.

Version

Use the default value, as only one version is currently supported.

Maximum Memory

The maximum memory that each virtual machine is permitted to use on the target machine.

Maximum Number of VMs

The number of virtual machines that can be run in parallel on the target machine.

Networking Support

The VMware instances can be configured to use network support. There are four options in the pull-down menu.

  • None: No networking support.

  • NAT: Network address translation.

  • Bridged: Bridged mode.

  • NAT and Bridged: Allow both methods.

Path to Perl Executable

The path to the Perl executable.

STEP 9: Choose Setup Type

The next step is where the destination of the HTCondor files will be decided. We recommend that HTCondor be installed in the location shown as the default in the install choice: C:\Condor. This is due to several hard coded paths in scripts and configuration files. Clicking on the Custom choice permits changing the installation directory.

Installation on the local disk is chosen for several reasons. The HTCondor services run as local system, and within Microsoft Windows, local system has no network privileges. Therefore, for HTCondor to operate, HTCondor should be installed on a local hard drive, as opposed to a network drive (file server).

The second reason for installation on the local disk is that the Windows usage of drive letters has implications for where HTCondor is placed. The drive letter used must be not change, even when different users are logged in. Local drive letters do not change under normal operation of Windows.

While it is strongly discouraged, it may be possible to place HTCondor on a hard drive that is not local, if a dependency is added to the service control manager such that HTCondor starts after the required file services are available.

Unattended Installation Procedure Using the MSI Installer

This section details how to run the HTCondor for Windows installer in an unattended batch mode. This mode is one that occurs completely from the command prompt, without the GUI interface.

The HTCondor for Windows installer uses the Microsoft Installer (MSI) technology, and it can be configured for unattended installs analogous to any other ordinary MSI installer.

The following is a sample batch file that is used to set all the properties necessary for an unattended install.

@echo on
set ARGS=
set ARGS=NEWPOOL="N"
set ARGS=%ARGS% POOLNAME=""
set ARGS=%ARGS% RUNJOBS="C"
set ARGS=%ARGS% VACATEJOBS="Y"
set ARGS=%ARGS% SUBMITJOBS="Y"
set ARGS=%ARGS% CONDOREMAIL="you@yours.com"
set ARGS=%ARGS% SMTPSERVER="smtp.localhost"
set ARGS=%ARGS% ALLOWREAD="*"
set ARGS=%ARGS% ALLOWWRITE="*"
set ARGS=%ARGS% ALLOWADMINISTRATOR="$(IP_ADDRESS)"
set ARGS=%ARGS% INSTALLDIR="C:\Condor"
set ARGS=%ARGS% POOLHOSTNAME="$(IP_ADDRESS)"
set ARGS=%ARGS% ACCOUNTINGDOMAIN="none"
set ARGS=%ARGS% JVMLOCATION="C:\Windows\system32\java.exe"
set ARGS=%ARGS% USEVMUNIVERSE="N"
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMMEMORY="128"
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMMAXNUMBER="$(NUM_CPUS)"
set ARGS=%ARGS% VMNETWORKING="N"
REM set ARGS=%ARGS% LOCALCONFIG="http://my.example.com/condor_config.$(FULL_HOSTNAME)"

msiexec /qb /l* condor-install-log.txt /i condor-8.0.0-133173-Windows-x86.msi %ARGS%

Each property corresponds to answers that would have been supplied while running the interactive installer. The following is a brief explanation of each property as it applies to unattended installations; see the above explanations for more detail.

NEWPOOL = < Y | N >

determines whether the installer will create a new pool with the target machine as the central manager.

POOLNAME

sets the name of the pool, if a new pool is to be created. Possible values are either the name or the empty string “”.

RUNJOBS = < N | A | I | C >

determines when HTCondor will run jobs. This can be set to:

  • Never run jobs (N)

  • Always run jobs (A)

  • Only run jobs when the keyboard and mouse are Idle (I)

  • Only run jobs when the keyboard and mouse are idle and the CPU usage is low (C)

VACATEJOBS = < Y | N >

determines what HTCondor should do when it has to stop the execution of a user job. When set to Y, HTCondor will vacate the job and start it somewhere else if possible. When set to N, HTCondor will merely suspend the job in memory and wait for the machine to become available again.

SUBMITJOBS = < Y | N >

will cause the installer to configure the machine as a submit node when set to Y.

CONDOREMAIL

sets the e-mail address of the HTCondor administrator. Possible values are an e-mail address or the empty string “”.

ALLOWREAD

is a list of names that are allowed to issue READ commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the ALLOW_READ setting in the configuration file, as described in the Authorization section.

ALLOWWRITE

is a list of names that are allowed to issue WRITE commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the ALLOW_WRITE setting in the configuration file, as described in the Authorization section.

ALLOWADMINISTRATOR

is a list of names that are allowed to issue ADMINISTRATOR commands to HTCondor daemons. This value should be set in accordance with the ALLOW_ADMINISTRATOR setting in the configuration file, as described in the Authorization section.

INSTALLDIR

defines the path to the directory where HTCondor will be installed.

POOLHOSTNAME

defines the host name of the pool’s central manager.

ACCOUNTINGDOMAIN

defines the accounting (or UID) domain the target machine will be in.

JVMLOCATION

defines the path to Java virtual machine on the target machine.

SMTPSERVER

defines the host name of the SMTP server that the target machine is to use to send e-mail.

VMMEMORY

an integer value that defines the maximum memory each VM run on the target machine.

VMMAXNUMBER

an integer value that defines the number of VMs that can be run in parallel on the target machine.

VMNETWORKING = < N | A | B | C >

determines if VM Universe can use networking. This can be set to:

  • None (N)

  • NAT (A)

  • Bridged (B)

  • NAT and Bridged (C)

USEVMUNIVERSE = < Y | N >

will cause the installer to enable VM Universe jobs on the target machine.

LOCALCONFIG

defines the location of the local configuration file. The value can be the path to a file on the local machine, or it can be a URL beginning with http. If the value is a URL, then the condor_urlfetch tool is invoked to fetch configuration whenever the configuration is read.

PERLLOCATION

defines the path to Perl on the target machine. This is required in order to use the vm universe.

After defining each of these properties for the MSI installer, the installer can be started with the msiexec command. The following command starts the installer in unattended mode, and it dumps a journal of the installer’s progress to a log file:

> msiexec /qb /lxv* condor-install-log.txt /i condor-8.0.0-173133-Windows-x86.msi [property=value] ...

More information on the features of msiexec can be found at Microsoft’s website at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/msiexec.mspx.

Manual Installation of HTCondor on Windows

If you are to install HTCondor on many different machines, you may wish to use some other mechanism to install HTCondor on additional machines rather than running the Setup program described above on each machine.

WARNING: This is for advanced users only! All others should use the Setup program described above.

Here is a brief overview of how to install HTCondor manually without using the provided GUI-based setup program:

The Service

The service that HTCondor will install is called “Condor”. The Startup Type is Automatic. The service should log on as System Account, but do not enable “Allow Service to Interact with Desktop”. The program that is run is condor_master.exe.

The HTCondor service can be installed and removed using the sc.exe tool, which is included in Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server. The tool is also available as part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit.

Installation can be done as follows:

> sc create Condor binpath= c:\condor\bin\condor_master.exe

To remove the service, use:

> sc delete Condor
The Registry

HTCondor uses a few registry entries in its operation. The key that HTCondor uses is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Condor. The values that HTCondor puts in this registry key serve two purposes.

  1. The values of CONDOR_CONFIG and RELEASE_DIR are used for HTCondor to start its service.

    CONDOR_CONFIG should point to the condor_config file. In this version of HTCondor, it must reside on the local disk.

    RELEASE_DIR should point to the directory where HTCondor is installed. This is typically C:\Condor, and again, this must reside on the local disk.

  2. The other purpose is storing the entries from the last installation so that they can be used for the next one.

The File System

The files that are needed for HTCondor to operate are identical to the Unix version of HTCondor, except that executable files end in .exe. For example the on Unix one of the files is condor_master and on HTCondor the corresponding file is condor_master.exe.

These files currently must reside on the local disk for a variety of reasons. Advanced Windows users might be able to put the files on remote resources. The main concern is twofold. First, the files must be there when the service is started. Second, the files must always be in the same spot (including drive letter), no matter who is logged into the machine.

Note also that when installing manually, you will need to create the directories that HTCondor will expect to be present given your configuration. This normally is simply a matter of creating the log, spool, and execute directories. Do not stage other files in any of these directories; any files not created by HTCondor in these directories are subject to removal.

For any installation, HTCondor services are installed and run as the Local System account. Running the HTCondor services as any other account (such as a domain user) is not supported and could be problematic.