Re: [HTCondor-users] HTCondor 8.2.10 Released

[Brian Bockelman <bbockelm@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Nov 2, 2015, at 8:35 AM, Michael V Pelletier <Michael.V.Pelletier@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> "HTCondor-users" <htcondor-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 11/02/2015 09:08:42 AM:
> 
> > From: Brian Bockelman <bbockelm@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
> > Date: 11/02/2015 09:11 AM 
> > 
> > Hi Svein,
> > 
> > Itâs highly discouraged to add the âcondorâ user to external databases 
> > anyway: this can cause problems in starting up HTCondor (particularly, if 
> > the condor or other services are started prior to availability of said database).
> > 
> > Instead, itâs best to treat this like user ânobodyâ or âhttpdâ: 
> > automatically installed or allocated by the system.
> > 
> > Can you provide a bit more explanation as to why you want to have condor 
> > in the external user DB anyway?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Brian
> > 
> > PS - RHEL / Fedora have the ability to reserve static UID/GID for a 
> > particular system user.  HTCondor should really do that, but I donât think
> > anyoneâs followed up on that yet...
> 
> Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid assigns "64" to the "condor" user and group, 
> as documented in /usr/share/doc/setup-*/uidgid, so that's what I used for my 
> pools' condor accounts on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS when installing 
> UWM's HTCondor package. 
> 
> Having the central account means that the RPM install doesn't try to 
> use an arbitrary UID and GID which might vary from system to system. 
> 
> A number of the systems are also configured as diskless with NFS root 
> file systems so stuff owned by the "condor" user shows up on shared 
> directories and having the centrally-defined user insures that those 
> files will be recognizable anywhere. 
> 

Yup - thatâs the primary reason why youâd want to do a reserved UID.

In fact, I just checked in Fedora,

/usr/share/doc/setup/uidgid

and sure enough, condor is reserved as 64.  However, this must have been specific to the RedHat-produced RPM: checking the UW build, I donât see it taking advantage of this.

TimT - can you look into this?

Brian