Installing DIAL 1.30 on OSG and LCG

D. Adams
21feb06

We describe how to install DIAL at an OSG or LCG site from a remote location. If you have direct access to the site, it might be easier to follow the instructions on the DIAL installation page.

First create the following configuration files:

globus_host - holding the name of gatekeeper for the site
globus_args - holding the environment definitions to be passed to the gatekeeper
globus_webrun - Full path on the gatekeeper to the script webrun which downloads scripts from the web and executes them.

The gatekeeper environment must include DIALBASE, the location where DIAL and its externals are to be installed. It should also include the base application directory base directory, OSG_APPDIR for OSG and VO_ATLAS_SW_DIR for LCG, if this variable is not already in the environment (at present it is present on LCG and is not present on OSG). If needed a web proxy may also be defined here.

For example, here are the files used for the BNL gatekeepers: globus_host, globus_args, globus_webrun.

The following scripts are used submit and monitor interactions with the globus job manager.

gsub COM - Submit command COM (full path at remote site) to run within the host from globus_host with the environment defined in globus_args.
grun COM - Same as gsub but waits for and echoes result.
gwsub URL - Submit the script at URL on the gatekeeper.
gwsub URL - Run the script at URL on the gatekeeper.
gstat - Retrieve the status for the last command.
gout - Retrieve stdout from the last command.
gerr - Retrieve stderr from the last command.
gclean - Clean up after the the last command. This is called when the next command is issued.

One is of course free to directly use the equivalent globus commands. Or if you have direct access to the sites, use

  > $DIALBASE/scripts/webrun command

in place of "gwrun command". The variables OSG_APPDIR or VO_ATLAS_SW_DIR and DIALBASE must be defined.

In the configuration files above and examples below, replace the explicit BNL directories with the values appropriate for the target installation site.

Support for multiple platforms
The installation scripts allow sites to run different platforms but assume they are compatible and only install one version of each software package. All must be known variants of RedHat Enterprise 3. Known means known to pkgmgr which presently supports standard RedHat (rhel3), scientific linux (sl3) and CERN scientific linux (slc3). As noted below, some of the steps have to be repeated for each supported platform.

The easiest way to install dial on multiple platforms at a site is to run the following scripts on each platform. In some cases (indicated below) it is possible to specify the target platform.

Install webrun

First create the installation directory and copy the webrun script with the following commands:

  > grun /bin/mkdir -p /usatlas/projects/OSG/dial/scripts
  > grun /usr/bin/wget http://www.usatlas.bnl.gov/~dladams/dial/osg_scripts/webrun -O `cat globus_webrun` --cache=off
  > grun /bin/chmod +x `cat globus_webrun`

Local installers can omit the grun prefix and replace the cat string with the full path to the webrun script.

This does not need to be repeated for multiple platforms.

Software installation and site configuration

The software and VO site configuration may be installed as described for installation at the site on the DIAL installation page. In each command replace the script "$DIALBASE/scripts/webrun" with the command gwrun (or gwsub).

Data

The data to be accessed at the site should be resident at the site with files registered in the local replica catalog and datasets in the appropriate dataset catalog.

dladams@bnl.gov