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When we say "Personal HTCondor" we mean two things which are actually independent, but which normally go together

  1. A single node HTCondor pool
  2. A HTCondor pool in which all of the daemons and jobs run as a single user

These instructions show you how to set up HTCondor to be both of these things, but keep in mind that they are actually independent, and you can easily change the configuration to have a multi-node pool running as a single user, or a single-node pool where the daemons run as root (and jobs run unprivileged).

These instructions are for Windows. Instructions for *nix and OSX are here

Get HTCondor binaries

Downloading the tarball/zip release

Or build HTCondor and tar/zip the release_dir directory from the build 

REM assuming that you build HTCondor V8_4_0-branch in c:\scratch\build\condor
REM izip is in the msconfig directory of your sources.
> cd /d C:\scratch\build\condor\release_dir
> izip -r ..\condor-8.4.0-339550-Windows-x86.zip *

For Personal HTCondor we use the tarball/zip release because this lets you control where the binaries will be installed, and will allow you have more than a single version of HTCondor running at once.

Setting up your Personal HTCondor

The remainder of this guide will assume that you downloaded or built the condor-8.4.0-339550-Windows-x86.zip archive. If you are working with a different archive, adjust the commands accordingly.

Unpack the HTCondor binaries (setting up "RELEASE_DIR")

We refer to the place where the HTCondor binaries live as RELEASE_DIR, you can unpack the archive to create this directory using the following commands. 

cd \scratch
mkdir condor84
cd condor84
7z x <path-to-archive>\condor-8.4.0-339550-Windows-x86.zip

The directory \scratch\condor84 will now contain the HTCondor binaries, it will contain subdirectores bin, sbin, libexec, etc and several others. We call this directory RELEASE_DIR.

Create configuration (setting up "LOCAL_DIR")

HTCondor needs configuration files, and at least 3 runtime directories: log, spool and execute. Create configuration files by copying condor_config.generic from the etc directory and then editing it 

mkdir \scratch\local\condor84
mkdir \scratch\local\condor84\log
mkdir \scratch\local\condor84\spool
mkdir \scratch\local\condor84\execute
copy \scratch\condor84\etc\condor_config.generic \scratch\condor84\condor_config
notepad \scratch\condor84\condor_config

In your editor, find RELEASE_DIR and change the value to c:\scratch\condor84, and find LOCAL_DIR, remove the # and change the value to c:\scratch\local\condor84, {snip : change condor_config} ## Where have you installed the bin, sbin and lib condor directories? RELEASE_DIR = C:\scratch\condor84

## Where is the local condor directory for each host? This is where the local config file(s), logs and LOCAL_DIR = c:\scratch\local\condor84 {endsnip}

Then at the bottom of this file add 

append to condor_config
use ROLE : Personal
NETWORK_INTERFACE = 127.0.0.1

If you plan to run more than a single instance of HTCondor on this machine, you will also need to create unique value for the procd_pipe on windows, and you may want to configure a unique port for the Collector listen on. 

add to condor_config.local
PROCD_ADDRESS = \\.\pipe\condor_procd_pipe8399
#optional
COLLECTOR_HOST = $(CONDOR_HOST):8399

Setup your environment to run your Personal HTCondor

In order to start this Personal HTCondor or to use any of the HTCondor tools with it, you need to set the PATH and CONDOR_CONFIG environment variables. One way to do this it to create a small batch file and use it setup the environment.

create this file in in your \scratch\condor84 directory. call it setenv.bat 

setenv.bat
set PATH=c:\scratch\condor84\bin;%PATH%
set CONDOR_CONFIG=c:\scratch\condor84\condor_config

Run your Personal HTCondor

First, make sure that you will run the correct HTCondor. The which command can be used to find out if you will run the correct condor_master: 

> \scratch\condor84\setenv.bat
> where condor_master
\scratch\condor84\bin\condor_master.exe
Then run condor_master: 
> start \scratch\condor84\bin\condor_master -f
Wait a second, and make sure that everything is running: 
> tasklist | findstr /i condor
When you are done with your personal HTCondor, you can kill it with: 
> condor_off -master

Remember you must use \scratch\condor84\setenv.bat or some other method to set the PATH and CONDOR_CONFIG and environment variables before you start HTCondor or use an of the tools.

Run a simple job on your Personal HTCondor

Create a simple script, call it simple.bat, it should print some output and then exit - something like this: 

simple.bat
echo This is a Simple job
echo This is the job's environment
env

Create a HTCondor submit file to run this script, call it simple.sub it should have the following submit statements 

simple.sub
executable = simple.bat
transfer_executable = true
should_transfer_files = yes
log = simple.log
output = simple.out
error = simple.err

Run the following command to submit this job to HTCondor 

> condor_submit simple.sub

As soon as the job is successfully submitted, it will create a log file called simple.log that will contain something like this: 

> type simple.log
000 (001.000.000) 09/24 14:03:54 Job submitted from host: <127.0.0.1:50558?addrs=127.0.0.1-50558>
...

You can use the condor_q command to see the job in the SCHEDD 

> condor_q

-- Schedd: you@your-machine : <127.0.0.1:50558?...
 ID      OWNER            SUBMITTED     RUN_TIME ST PRI SIZE CMD
   1.0   you             9/24 14:08   0+00:00:00 I  0   0.0  simple.bat

1 jobs; 0 completed, 0 removed, 1 idle, 0 running, 0 held, 0 suspended

If you don't see anything when you run condor_q, the job may have completed already. In that case, try condor_history 

> condor_history
 ID     OWNER          SUBMITTED   RUN_TIME     ST COMPLETED   CMD
  1.0   you            9/24 14:03   0+00:01:02 C   9/24 14:06 simple.bat

If the job does not run within a minute or two, there is most likely a configuration problem with your Personal HTCondor, See Basic Troubleshooting for a Personal HTCondor for more information.