Re: [HTCondor-users] Linux Jobs in a Windows Lab

[John M Knoeller <johnkn@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don’t think WSL is viable at this time.  WSL really doesn’t work on the services desktop as far as I can tell.  You could run a HTCondor startd inside the WSL environment as an ordinary user. Which would be able to report to a collector and run jobs, but the jobs would have the same privileges as the HTCondor daemons, and you would have to have leave someone actually logged into the machine in order to have the startd (and thus the jobs) running.

 

WSL is working on background processes, which might solve the logged in user problem, but you would still have jobs running as the same user as the HTCondor daemons.

 

-tj

 

From: HTCondor-users [mailto:htcondor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hendricksen, Christopher Erik
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 3:33 PM
To: htcondor-users@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [HTCondor-users] Linux Jobs in a Windows Lab

 

Hi all,

 

We’d like to start running htcondor on our lab machines, but the problem we’re facing is that most of our jobs are linux jobs and most of our lab machines are Windows machines. I wanted to ask what other people in this situation are doing. I’ve considered a few options but have run into problems with each.

 

Docker – Using docker to run jobs would be great since our Windows, OS X, and Linux machines should all be able to handle Docker universe jobs, but I haven’t been able to get Docker working with HTCondor on Windows (I can provide more info here if needed)

 

Dual Boot – We only have limited space on our drives, and I would be hard pressed to permanently set aside enough space to run a useful htcondor environment. It would also be a lot of extra work maintaining another OS. Also this would only be an option when the lab is closed (ideally idle machines would be available whether or not the lab is closed).

 

PXE Boot to linux environment – I don’t know if this is even an option, but it may be a way to dual boot without having to permanently dedicate space on the local drive.

 

WSL – I’m not sure the Windows Subsystem for Linux will be robust enough to handle the jobs that we might get.

 

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d really appreciate it. Or if you’ve gotten Docker to work with htcondor in windows, I’d be interested in hearing how.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

-Chris

 

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Chris Hendricksen, PhD

Senior Academic IT Specialist

University of Illinois | Technology Services

Instructional Computing Services