GET_HTCONDOR(1)

NAME
get_htcondor - HTCondor Manual

Install and configure HTCondor on Linux machines.

SYNOPSIS

get_htcondor <-h | --help>

get_htcondor [--[no-]dry-run] [--channel name] [--minicondor | [--central-manager | --submit | --execute] central-manager-name] [--shared-filesystem-domain filesystem-domain-name]

get_htcondor --dist

DESCRIPTION

This tool installs and configure HTCondor on Linux machines. See https://htcondor.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting-htcondor for detailed instructions. This page is intended as a quick reference to its options; it also includes a section about the reasons for the configurations it installs.

OPTIONS

-help
    Print a usage reminder.

--dry-run
    Do not issue commands, only print them. [default]

--no-dry-run
    Issue all the commands needed to install HTCondor.

--channel name
    Specify channel name to install; name may be current, the most recent release with new features [default] or stable, the most recent release with only bug-fixes

--dist
    Display the detected operating system and exit.

--minicondor
    Configure as a single-machine ("mini") HTCondor. [default]

    --central-manager central-manager-name

    --submit central-manager-name

    --execute central-manager-name Configure this installation with the central manager, submit, or execute role.

    --shared-filesystem-domain filesystem-domain-name Configure this installation to assume that machines specifying the same filesystem-domain-name share a filesystem.

EXIT STATUS

On success, exits with code 0. Failures detected by get_htcondor will result in exit code 1. Other failures may have other exit codes.

INSTALLED CONFIGURATION

This tool may install four different configurations. We discuss the single-machine configuration first, and then the three parts of the multi-machine configuration as a group. Our goal is to document the reasoning behind the details, because the details can obscure that reasoning, and because the details will change as we continue to improve HTCondor.

As a general note, the configurations this tool installs make extensive use of metaknobs, lines in HTCondor configuration files that look like use x : y. To determine exactly what configuration a metaknob sets, run condor_config_val use x:y.

  Single-Machine Installation

The single-machine installation performed by get_htcondor uses the minicondor package. (A "mini" HTCondor is a single-machine HTCondor system installed with administrative privileges.) Because the different roles in the HTCondor system are all on the same machine, we configure all network communications to occur over the loopback device, where we don't have to worry about eavesdropping or requiring encryption. We use the FS method, which depends on the local filesytem, to identify which user is attempting to connect, and restrict access correspondingly.

The get_htcondor tool installs the standard minicondor package from the HTCondor repositories; see the file it creates, /etc/condor/config.d/00-minicondor, for details.

  Multi-Machine Installation

Because the three roles must communicate over the network to form a complete pool in this case,, security is a much bigger concern; we therefore require authentication and encryption on every connection. Thankfully, almost all of the network communication is daemon-to-daemon, so we don't have to burden individual users with that aspect of security. Instead, users submit jobs on the submit-role machine, using FS to authenticate. Users may also need to contact the central manager (when running condor_status, for example), but they never need to write anything to it, so we've configured authentication for read-only commands to be optional.

Daemon-to-daemon communication is authenticated with the IDTOKENS method. (If a user needs to submit jobs remotely, they can also use the IDTOKENS method, it's just more work; see condor_token_fetch.) Each role installed by this tool has a copy of the password, which is used to generate an IDTOKEN, which is used for all daemon-to-daemon authentication; both the password and the IDTOKEN can only be read by privileged processes. An IDTOKEN can only be validated by the holder of the corresponding password, so each daemon in the pool has to have both.

This tool installs the role-specific configuration in the files /etc/condor/config.d/01-central-manager.config, /etc/condor/config.d/01-submit.config, and /etc/condor/config.d/01-execute.config; consult them for details.

AUTHOR
HTCondor Team

COPYRIGHT
1990-2026, Center for High Throughput Computing, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, US. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.