Re: [Condor-users] Windows jobs behave deifferently under Condor

["Philip Crawford" <p.crawford@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael,
I saw a couple of potential traps here.
1. Is SPSSWIN.EXE going to create a Window, even a minimised one? Condor
won't allow an application to run which creates a GUI window. If you run
your spssprod task manually, does an additional window show on the taskbar
while it is running? This would indicate that SPSSWIN.EXE is creating a GUI
window, but minimising it.

2. I was going to address the issue of ACL's, but see that someone else has
already done that. Condor on Windows normally creates the user you mention
and disables it except while running a job. However, you can tell Condor to
use a specific username, (e.g., set up a user Condor). This will allow you
to test your tasks under exactly the same environment that Condor uses.
(Except the GUI restriction I mentioned above.)

Phil Crawford
__________________________________________________
Philip Crawford, B. Comp. Sc., MIEEE
School of Medical Sciences
The University of NSW
Phone: +61-2-9385 2564
Mobile: +61-419-294 698
Fax: +61-2-9385 1059
Email: p.crawford@xxxxxxxxxxx
__________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: condor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:condor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Jinks
Sent: Wednesday, 23 August 2006 11:06 AM
To: condor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Condor-users] Windows jobs behave deifferently under Condor

Hi all.

We're trying to help some researchers use our Condor cluster to submit
batches of SPSS jobs, and having trouble.  I don't think Condor is "the
problem", per se, but the jobs work fine when run from the Windows
desktop, and we're having a hard time figuring out what's different
under Condor such that the jobs fail.

Details:

SPSS has a scriptable executable, what they call a "production
facility", called spssprod.exe.  Our researchers gave us a sample input
file called SPSSJob1.spp, and we have no trouble sitting down at one of
our Windows machines and running:

  spssprod.exe SPSSJob1.spp -s

With no further user interaction, it writes an output file to a location
specified in the SPSSJob1.spp file, which can be collected and viewed 
using the interactive SPSS application.

So, we wrote a simple Windows batch file, quoted here in full,

  SET PATH="C:\PROGRAM FILES\SPSS"
  SET SPSS="C:\PROGRAM FILES\SPSS"
  spssprod.exe SPSSJob1.spp -s

...plus a submit file which transfers the .bat executable along with
SPSSJob1.spp and a "syntax" file.  We know that the Condor portion of
the process works, because spssprod writes an output file to the same
specified destination; unfortunately, now that output only consists of:

  8/18/2006 4:07:29 PM
  Unable to start SPSSWIN.EXE application.

So obviously there's something different about running commands from the
console vs. sending them through Condor, which SPSS doesn't like.  I
wrote another simple batch file which just runs "SET", so that we could
compare the environment variable settings between the two cases.  The
only thing I found that looked promising was an "SPSS" variable, thus the
second line of the batch file quoted above, but that didn't seem to make
any difference, and it's at this point that my meager Windows knowledge
pretty much runs out.

So my question boils down to something like this: Aside from the
environnment, is there some salient difference in the way jobs execute
under Condor which would have an impact on the runtime behavior of a
process?

I've also opened up a case with SPSS, but I'm afraid that they'll just
point the finger at Condor and shrug.  I don't expect Condor folks to
know the hairy details of how SPSS operates, but I'm hoping that
somebody has seen an analogous situation with other Windows apps which
might throw some light on this.  Our cluster is a new endeavor, so we
don't have much in-house experience to guide us.

Thanks,
--Michael
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