Re: [Condor-users] Condor and IDL

[Ángel de Vicente <angelv@xxxxxx>]

Hi,

Ángel de Vicente wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> in case this could be of interest to anyone...
>
> at our place many people use IDL. Until now, our use of IDL with 
> Condor was limited by the number of available licenses at any given 
> time, until we discovered the IDL Virtual machine 
> (http://www.creaso.com/english/12_swvis/11_idl/idlvm.htm)  which lets 
> you run an IDL "executable" file without the need for licenses (see 
> http://www.astro.umass.edu/~tangsk/documents/idl_html_help/distributing4.html#wp1010436 
> for an example of how to create such a file).
>
> The problem is that the IDL Virtual Machine is meant to be run 
> interactively in a server with X running and Condor is not 
> particularly well suited for this. But with a little ingenuity, we 
> wrote a script (still in beta :-)) that uses Xvfb and Xautomation to 
> submit condor jobs that will create a virtual X server, then 
> automatically click the "Click to continue" button of the IDL virtual 
> machine 
> (http://www.creaso.com/english/12_swvis/11_idl/IDLVM_splash.jpg), and 
> then do whatever the code is supposed to do. We have tested this, and 
> so far it works quite well. There are some glitches with multicore 
> machines and slow machines, but overall it works without any problems, 
> and now we can submit hundreds of IDL jobs simultaneously to our 
> Condor pool!
>
> If anyone is interested, please let me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Ángel de Vicente

I just put a How-To about this at 
http://www.iac.es/sieinvens/siepedia/pmwiki.php?n=HOWTOs.CondorAndIDLVirtualMachine 
for future reference.

Perhaps there is a place in the Condor pages (tips, howtos, etc.?) where 
a link to this could be appropriate? If so, please let me know.

Cheers,
Ángel de Vicente

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