Re: [Condor-users] Job submission - generic user GUI available?

[Matt Hope <matthew.hope@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 15:40:53 +0100, John Horne
<John.Horne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> We are setting up a Linux-based Condor server which will utilise Linux
> PC's/clients around our site. However, our site users are mainly MS-
> Windows users. Whilst initially the service will be for the unix/linux
> users, I am wondering how we can provide some form of generic user
> interface for all our users?
> 
> Asking a linux user to create a text file to control their condor job is
> not a problem, but asking them to understand what the file must contain
> (the submit description file) is not going to work too well. They will
> either need to read the Condor users manual or we will have to provide a
> bunch of instructions on what they should put into the file.
> 
> My question is really how do other sites allow users to submit jobs to
> condor? Our condor server does not have any user accounts and there is
> no intention to provide any, so we also need to think about how to get
> the output back to the user. The jobs being submitted could basically be
> anything.
> 
> Is there any sort of GUI available by which a user can submit a simple
> job to condor - e.g. the executable and input/output file names?

There is no official gui nor web interface (since it would inherently
end up need to be all things to all people and therefore not worth
bothering with for power users since writing/scripting a file is so
much more powerful yourself.

There have been several people submit links to web portals for
submission (have a search of the archives) I couldn't vouch for any as
I haven't tried them.

a perl module exists to make scripted submission easier and I rolled
my own c# .Net wrapper over most of the command tools with little
effort.

one advantage with web portal/gui you can lock things down exactly as
you want it.
pro/cons on each:

Web portal
pros: 
No deployment of condor or gui wrapper to clients
Easy to update
Allows external security on access and access anywhere
cons:
If used with a single schedd then performance could suffer (see posts passim)
It's not easy to switch to be a different user when actually
submitting a job (though doable but nasty) so no easy per user job
division
Central point of failure

local gui
pros:
Distributes the load across multiple machines
Per user behaviour is fine
no hassles with moving files to/from submission server
allows different condor configuration for each user
cons:
Can be a pain to deploy
requires condor install on all users machines

If you have no serious issues with deployment I would suggest the gui
route is easier in the short term.
As the number of users grows the benefits of the web portal approach
increase yet the performance headaches that  involves also increase...

Matt