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Installing the Worker Node Client via Tarball

The OSG Worker Node Client is a collection of software components that is expected to be added to every worker node that can run OSG jobs. It provides a common environment and a minimal set of common tools that all OSG jobs can expect to use. Contents of the worker node client can be found here.

Note

It is possible to install the Worker Node Client software in a variety of ways, depending on your local site:

  • Install using a tarball (this guide) - useful when installing onto a shared filesystem for distribution to worker nodes
  • Use from OASIS - useful when worker nodes already mount CVMFS
  • Install using RPMs and Yum - useful when managing your worker nodes with a tool (e.g., Puppet, Chef) that can automate RPM installs

This document is intended to guide users through the process of installing the worker node software and configuring the installed worker node software. Although this document is oriented to system administrators, any unprivileged user may install and use the client.

Before starting, ensure the host has a supported operating system.

Download the WN Client

Where is the OSG 24 worker node tarball?

We plan to distribute the worker node tarball in the coming weeks.

Please pick the osg-wn-client tarball that is appropriate for your distribution and architecture. You will find them in https://repo.osg-htc.org/tarball-install/ .

For OSG 23:

Install the WN Client

  1. Unpack the tarball.
  2. Move the directory that was created to where you want the tarball client to be.
  3. Run osg-post-install (<PATH_TO_CLIENT>/osg/osg-post-install) to fix the directories in the installation.
  4. Source the setup source <PATH_TO_CLIENT>/setup.sh (or setup.csh depending on the shell).
  5. Download and set up CA certificates using osg-ca-manage (See the CA management documentation for the available options).
  6. Download CRLs using fetch-crl.

Note

The WN client requires a Perl interpreter to be available in /usr/bin/perl. If not present, install by running yum install perl as root.

Warning

Once osg-post-install is run to relocate the install, it cannot be run again. You will need to unpack a fresh copy.

Example EL9 installation (in /home/user/test-install, the <PATH_TO_CLIENT>/ is /home/user/test-install/osg-wn-client ):

user@host $ mkdir /home/user/test-install
user@host $ cd /home/user/test-install
user@host $ wget https://repo.osg-htc.org/tarball-install/24-main/osg-wn-client-latest.el9.x86_64.tar.gz
user@host $ tar xzf osg-wn-client-latest.el9.x86_64.tar.gz
user@host $ cd osg-wn-client
user@host $ ./osg/osg-post-install
user@host $ source setup.sh
user@host $ osg-ca-manage setupCA --url osg
user@host $ fetch-crl

Configure the CE

Using the wn-client software installed from the tarball will require a few changes on the compute entrypoint so that the resource's configuration can be correctly reported.

Set grid_dir in the Storage section of your OSG-Configure configs: CE configuration instructions. grid_dir is used as the $OSG_GRID environment variable in running jobs - see the worker node environment document. Pilot jobs source $OSG_GRID/setup.sh before performing any work. The value set for grid_dir must be the path of the wn-client installation directory. This is the path returned by echo $OSG_LOCATION once you source the setup file created by this installation.

Services

The WN client is a collection of client programs that do not require service startup or shutdown. The only services are osg-update-certs that keeps the CA certificates up-to-date and fetch-crl that keeps the CRLs up-to-date. Following the instructions below you'll add the services to your crontab that will take care to run them periodically until you remove them.

Auto-updating certificates and CRLs

You must create cron jobs to run fetch-crl and osg-update-certs to update your CRLs and certificates automatically.

Here is what they should look like. (Note: fill in <OSG_LOCATION> with the full path of your tarball install, including osg-wn-client that is created by the tarball).

# Cron job to update certs.
# Runs every hour by default, though does not update certs until they're at
# least 24 hours old.  There is a random sleep time for up to 45 minutes (2700
# seconds) to avoid overloading cert servers.
10 * * * *   ( . <OSG_LOCATION>/setup.sh && osg-update-certs --random-sleep 2700 --called-from-cron )

# Cron job to update CRLs
# Runs every 6 hours at, 45 minutes +/- 3 minutes.
42 */6 * * *   ( . <OSG_LOCATION>/setup.sh && fetch-crl -q -r 360 )

You might want to configure proxy settings in $OSG_LOCATION/etc/fetch-crl.conf.

Enabling and Disabling Services

To enable the CRL updates, you must edit your cron with crontab -e and add the lines above. To disable, remove the lines from the crontab.

Validating the Worker Node Client

To verify functionality of the worker node client, you will need to submit a test job against your CE and verify the job's output.

  1. Submit a job that executes the env command (e.g. Run condor_ce_trace with the -d flag from your HTCondor CE)
  2. Verify that the value of $OSG_GRID is set to the directory of your worker node client installation

How to get Help?

To get assistance please use this Help Procedure.

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