[Condor-users] Condor to run commercial software with floating license (Opera)

[SG Wilkinson <Stephen.Wilkinson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I use Condor to submit jobs to a pool of WinXP computers running Opera3D
(electromagnetic FEA software from Vector Fields) - the computers have
Opera installed on the hard disc and obtain a floating license from a
license server running NETHASP License Manager (by Aladdin). The
licensing is via a dongle on the parallel port of the license server. I
have checked that the pool can see the network license dongle.

The jobs are correctly allocated to the machines (matchlog and
negociatorlog on Condor all normal, starter log on remote machine also
ok). But the jobs don't actually run - when I look in the Windows task
manager, the processes owned by condor-reuse-vm1 are there but are not
taking any CPU time and the CPU is idle.
If I run \Condor\execute\dir_$PID\condor_exec.exe from the command line
as myself (I have admin rights on the machine) the job runs to
completion (and takes up 99% of CPU time). This proves that all the
files necessary are present and that the licensing mechanism works (at
least that floating licenses are being leased to users)

I don't have access to the log files on the license server at the
moment, but I have done another test to satisfy myself that the problem
is condor-and-floating-license related: we have a local license dongle
which I attached to the parallel port of one of the pool machines. When
I submitted the job to that particular machine using Condor, this time
it executed properly.

Has anyone got experience of running jobs through condor which require
floating licenses? Has the Condor team tested this type of commercial
licensed software?

I hope to have access to the license server logs to shed some light on
this, but if anyone has any suggestions as to what might be going on and
how to fix the problem, they would be much appreciated!

Steve