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Configuring for the Local Batch System

Before HTCondor-CE can submit jobs to your local batch system, it has to be configured to do so. The configuration will differ depending on if your local batch system is HTCondor or one of the other supported batch systems. Choose the section corresponding to your batch system below.

HTCondor Batch Systems

To configure HTCondor-CE for an HTCondor batch system, set JOB_ROUTER_SCHEDD2_POOL to your site's central manager host and port:

JOB_ROUTER_SCHEDD2_POOL = cm.chtc.wisc.edu:9618

Additionally, set JOB_ROUTER_SCHEDD2_SPOOL to the location of the local batch SPOOL directory on the CE host if it is different than the default location (/var/lib/condor/spool).

Non-HTCondor Batch Systems

Configuring the BLAHP

HTCondor-CE uses the Batch Language ASCII Helper Protocol (BLAHP) to submit and track jobs to non-HTCondor batch systems. If your batch system tools are installed in a non-standard location (i.e., outside of /usr/bin/), set the corresponding *_binpath variable in /etc/blah.config to the directory containing your batch system tools:

If your batch system is... Then change the following configuration variable...
LSF lsf_binpath
PBS/Torque pbs_binpath
SGE sge_binpath
Slurm slurm_binpath

For example, if your Slurm binaries (e.g. sbatch) exist in /opt/slurm/bin, you would set the following:

slurm_binpath=/opt/slurm/bin/

Sharing the SPOOL directory

Non-HTCondor batch systems require a shared file system configuration to support file transfer from the HTCondor-CE to your site's worker nodes. The current recommendation is to run a dedicated NFS server on the CE host. In this setup, HTCondor-CE writes to the local spool directory, the NFS server shares the directory, and each worker node mounts the directory in the same location as on the CE. For example, if your spool directory is /var/lib/condor-ce (the default), you must mount the shared directory to /var/lib/condor-ce on the worker nodes.

Note

If you choose not to host the NFS server on your CE, you will need to turn off root squash so that the HTCondor-CE daemons can write to the spool directory.

You can control the value of the spool directory by setting SPOOL in /etc/condor-ce/config.d/99-local.conf (create this file if it doesn't exist). For example, the following sets the SPOOL directory to /home/condor:

SPOOL = /home/condor

Note

The shared spool directory must be readable and writeable by the condor user for HTCondor-CE to function correctly.