Re: [HTCondor-users] strangeness with condor_history

[David Schultz <david.schultz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi JT,

The problem here is that removed jobs are not considered completed, and have `CompletionDate = 0`. completedsince is a "scan until the first job that completed on or before the given unix timestamp," which means it does a reverse search until CompletionDate<=time_expr and lists all jobs more recent than that (but not including that matching job). So in the case of a removed job being the most recent job on the history, it will match the _expression_ and halt the search, returning no jobs. (this may be something the condor team should "fix")

Personally, I don't use the completedsince flag and use constraints directly. You might consider using a constraint with EnteredCurrentStatus to filter the history, since that should always be set.

Best,

David

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 9:21 AM Jeff Templon <templon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yo

I wrote a while back about using condor_history to generate an âaccounting log fileâ that reproduces what we have with our Torque LRMS. Note here I use accounting in the Torque sense : accounting means transaction records like a bank account. What HTCondor calls accounting is something different, I already know that.

For right now, our HTCondor system only has one schedd, making the simplest approach to use condor_history on the schedd node. My prototype command is like this:

condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 15:00:00" +â%sâ) \
   -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId \
          RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage \
          ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime

Everything was fine, until I realised that I had made a mistake while submitting a bunch of jobs aimed at testing the command. I executed condor_rm to remove those jobs, and doing so not only removed the jobs from the queue, it removed them from the history!!. This violates some fundamental principle of accounting for me - deleting something from the queue should not erase the record of it ever having happened. While looking into this, I discovered something very weird: using a different form of the constraint command (above completedsince) gives different results. I am using âgrep CpusUsâ to grab out one line of output per found job, and then wc -l to count how many jobs were found.

â> date -d "2021-09-13 15:00:00" +"%s"
1631538000
â> condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 15:00:00" +"%s")  \
    -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId \
    RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize \
    ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
23
â> condor_history -json -constraint "CompletionDate > 1631538000 "  -af:hj Owner \
    Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost \
    RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize \
    RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
331

This difference seems to depend on whether the condor_rm has been issued or not. As I write this, itâs 16:00 :

â> date -d "2021-09-13 16:00:00" +"%s"
1631541600
â> condor_history -json -constraint "Owner == \"templon\" && CompletionDate > 1631541600" \
     -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId \
     RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize \
     ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
0
â> condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 16:00:00" +"%s") \
     -constraint "Owner == \"templon\""  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate  \
     JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus \
     RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize \
     RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
0

All looks fine. Now I submit a bunch of jobs, some of which will complete quickly, wait a bit, and try again.

â> condor_history -json -constraint "Owner == \"templon\" && CompletionDate > 1631541600"  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
40
â> condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 16:00:00" +"%s") -constraint "Owner == \"templon\""  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
40

Still looks fine. Now use condor_rm to delete the entire set of jobs:

â> condor_history -json -constraint "Owner == \"templon\" && CompletionDate > 1631541600"  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
41
â> condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 16:00:00" +"%s") -constraint "Owner == \"templon\""  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime | grep CpusUs | wc -l
0

The 41 result instead of 40 is because one more job completed between the last condor_history command and the condor_rm command.

Using the CompletionDate form of the constraint, all the jobs are still there, but completedsince is no longer accurate.

Whatâs going on?? The accounting records (note again: accounting in the Torque/bank account sense!) should be holy, and using completedsince they are not holy. This makes me wonder in what other circumstances are the records not holy. Is there some documentation on how to ensure that only holy output will result from my commands?

Thanks,

JT

ps: I did indeed check the jobs disappear (and not just the CpusUsage field).

â> condor_history -json -completedsince $(date -d "2021-09-13 16:00:00" +"%s") -constraint "Owner == \"templon\""  -af:hj Owner Cmd Args QDate JobCurrentStartDate CompletionDate GlobalJobId RemoteHost RequestCpus RequestMemory ExitCode CpusUsage ResidentSetSize ImageSize RemoteWallClockTime
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