8.2 Upgrading from the 7.4 series to the 7.6 series of Condor

While upgrading from the 7.4 series of Condor to the 7.6 series will bring many new features and improvements introduced in the 7.5 series of Condor, it will also introduce changes that administrators of sites running from an older Condor version should be aware of when planning an upgrade. Here is a list of items that administrators should be aware of.

• Previously, Condor's RPM packaging installed into /opt. Now, the RPM install paths adhere to the Linux Standard Base File System Hierarchy Standard (LSB-FHS), meaning Condor will be installed by default into appropriate subdirectories within /usr. See section 3.2.6 for updated RPM information.

• The feature set once known as the Startd Cron or as Hawkeye is now called Daemon ClassAd Hooks. Besides the new name, the mechanisms have been updated, and the configuration has changed. Sites using this functionality are strongly encouraged to update their configuration file to adhere to the new syntax. Configuration file syntax introduced in Condor version 7.2 is still compatible with Condor version 7.6, but the syntax of Condor version 7.0 is unlikely to work as expected. See section 4.4.3 for documentation.

• For those who compile Condor from the source code, rather than using packages of pre-built executables, Condor is now built using cmake on all platforms. This means the process for building Condor from source code has changed. For instructions, see the Condor Wiki at http://wiki.condorproject.org, and follow the Wiki link to the section on Building and Testing Condor.

• Quill and Stork are no longer included in the binary packages released from the Condor Project. Instead, both are available as Contribution Modules. Contribution Modules are optional packages that add functionality to Condor, but are provided and maintained outside of the core code base, often by third parties. To add Quill and/or Stork to Condor, see the Condor Wiki at http://wiki.condorproject.org, follow the Wiki link, and see the section titled User FAQs.

• The layout in the SPOOL directory has changed. As a result, be certain to upgrade all Condor binaries on a given host at the same time. That is, do not try to run Condor version 7.6 condor_schedd daemons and Condor version 7.4 condor_shadow daemons on the same machine. Also, should you need to revert back to an older version of Condor after running Condor version 7.6 (hopefully not the case!), be aware of release notes for Condor version 7.5.5 regarding the SPOOL directory in section 8.5.

• Issues regarding the detection of keyboard activity on Linux and especially on Windows Vista/7 have been addressed. Bottom line: if you want Condor to detect keyboard/mouse activity on either of these platforms, ensure that the subsystem KBDD is listed in the DAEMON_LIST configuration variable definition on start up.

• On Windows platforms, the MSI installer has been rewritten (using WiX) to better support Windows 7. While the installation process is essentially the same, a handful of arguments that control an unattended MSI installation have changed, such as the arguments controlling HDFS installation. See section 3.2.5 for the updated list of unattended installation arguments.

• The submit description file commands for grid jobs using a grid_resource type of amazon has changed. Users will need to edit their submit description files for jobs destined for Amazon to include an EC2 URL. See section 5.3.8.