[Condor-users] Standard universe woes (v7.4.2)

["Francesco.Prelz@xxxxxxxxxx" <Francesco.Prelz@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm trying to help a local user (who happens to be my Director :-O)
to run his physics code on the INFN Condor pool. We managed to coax the
code (Fortran, C++, ROOT and other zoo) into a form suitable for
condor_compiling that also efficiently produces the expected results. 

I'm hitting two problems, however:

1) The __libc_start_main linked from 
   /opt/condor/lib/libcondor_c.a(libc-start.o) (Condor version 7.4.2)
   is apparently performing the 'default' glibc (DL_SYSDEP_OSCHECK) kernel
   version check asking for for kernels > 2.6.8 (carefully researched version)
   at least according to the assembly code:
   0x096244fc <__libc_start_main+252>:     cmp    $0x20608,%edx
   Jobs get a fatal abort otherwise.

   From glibc documentation it seems that it is possible to build the library
   so that it can run on older kernels. Unless there is some other good reason
   preventing that, the glibc that's distributed with Condor for standard
   universe jobs could benefit from being built like that.
   
   Not having the option to force people who generously donate to our pool
   to upgrade their kernels, I am currently unable to find any easy workaround 
   other than excluding 'old kernel' pool nodes as I find them: is there any 
   trick to match on Linux kernel versions that doesn't require to tweak the 
   startd configuration on all pool nodes ? 
   
2) In the same time-dishonored INFN pool I'm also hitting condor_starters that 
   apparently do not set ADDR_NO_RANDOMIZE in the process personality, 
   resulting in crashes while attempting to write the randomized virtual memory
   'hole' to the checkpoint file. In which version(s) of Condor was the
   ADDR_NO_RANDOMIZE flag added for standard universe jobs ? Knowing this
   would help me in selecting friendly installations.

I keep wondering whether static linking for checkpointing is terminally 
doomed. Any other options for Condor in the bright future ?

Greetings from warm and sunny Milan.
Francesco Prelz
INFN - Milano