Release Announcement for NorduGrid ARC 15.03

March 27, 2015

The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) middleware is an Open Source software solution to enable distributed computing infrastructures with the emphasis on processing large volumes of data. ARC provides an abstraction layer over computational resources, complete with input and output data movement functionalities. The security model of ARC is identical to that of Grid solutions, relying on delegation of user credentials and the concept of Virtual Organisations. ARC also provides client tools, as well as API in C++, Python and Java.

ARC 15.03 is a major release of ARC, including the following component upgrades:

• core, clients, CE, Infosys and gridftp - from version 4.2.0 to 5.0.0
• documents - from 1.5.0 to 2.0.0
• Nagios plugins - from 1.8.1 to 1.8.2

CAnL C++ v1.0.1, gangliarc v1.0.0 and metapackages v1.0.7 are unchanged.

ARC development is coordinated by the NorduGrid Collaboration. The previous production ARC release, version 13.11u2, was released on August 14, 2014.

Upgrade and deployment notes

Upgrade is straightforward when standard Linux repositories are used, however please take note of configuration changes below. An automatic update is not recommended for this new major release. When using NorduGrid repositories, please switch to the 15.03 channel. Services (A-REX, GridFTPd and information system) will restart automatically upon package upgrade. Should they not restart, or when upgrade is done from source, manual restart is needed as per documentation.

For a first installation (from scratch), use of metapackages is recommended. Please consult ARC server and client deployment documentation.

Known issues are described later in this document.

Deployment notes

• arc-ur-logger is removed and sites reporting to SGAS through arc-ur-logger should use JURA instead. To migrate from ur-logger to JURA, follow this description. Note that the log_vo option used by arc-ur-logger is not yet implemented in JURA.
• cache-service is deprecated
• UNICORE client is deprecated
• CREAM client and corresponding job description language is deprecated
• job.xml is deprecated
• ARGUS based identitymap is deprecated
• Migration feature in A-REX and migration API is deprecated

Backwards incompatible changes

• Many [grid-manager] options in arc.conf have moved to the [data-staging] section. See details below.
• Removed components:
• arc-ur-logger
• LFC DMC
• DQ2 DMC
• old data staging in grid-manager
• confusa
• external gridsite dependency
• arcmigrate
• arcslcs and slcs service
• SAML service

New features highlights

• Added option to use sacct in SLURM backend, see details below
• Added several options to data-staging for better cache management, see details below
• It is now possible to turn off partial HTTP gets, see details below
• Support for SSLv3 is disabled

ARC components: detailed new features and deployment notes

ARC components in release 15.03 are:

• ARC server and client tools
• ARC documentation
• Nagios plugins
• Common authentication library CaNL++

ARC Server and core components

• Removed LCF DMC, DQ2 DMC, old data staging, SAML service and slcs service
• Added option to disable partial HTTP GET in A-REX and in URLs. Configurable with httpgetpartial option in [data-stager] in arc.conf and with httpgetpartial URL option in URLs. Default is httpgetpartial=yes. Note that setting httpgetpartial=no can significantly increase download speed for large files
• Added option cacheshared to the [data-staging] section to enable better management of caches on filesystems shared with other data
• Added option cachespacetool to the [data-staging] section to allow a user-specified tool for the cache cleaner to find file system space information
• Added option to use sacct in SLURM backend. Configurable with option slurm_use_sacct in [common] section in arc.conf. Default is no
• Support for SSLv3 is now disabled
• Many bugfixes, see details below

Accounting

• arc-ur-logger was removed, JURA should be used instead
• Added logging to JURA. For the logging to be enabled, jobreport_logfile must be set in the [grid-manager] section of arc.conf
• JURA now provides the same values to SGAS and APEL
• Many bugfixes, see details below

Information system

• Several bugfixes, see details below

ARC Clients

• Removed arcmigrate
• Several bugfixes, see details below

Nagios plugins

• Added option to monitor state progress
• Added support multiple LDAP attribute lookup, to be used in the EGI setup to add GlueSAPath as a fallback for GlueVOInfoPath for SRM checks
• Delayed some IGTF warnings which were raised before the publication day
• Fixed parsing of arcstat output for GLUE2-enabled CEs, using "Status" instead of "Specific status"
• Fixed /tmp file leak when arccp fails, and improved related logging
• Added --min-proxy-lifetime option and increased default to avoid expiration before the job is run
• Fixed missed passive state update when arcget output dir was absent

Common authentication library CaNL++

• No changes

Fixed bugs:

Since ARC 13.11 update 2, the following bugs were fully fixed:

• 959 stage-out (upload) whole directory to a remote storage
• 2756 poorly performing infosystem causes unstable client behaviour during job submission
• 2889 submit_common.sh calls config_parser.sh instead of config_parser_compat.sh ?
• 2938 PBS.pm wrong nordugrid-queue-running for multi-core jobs
• 3005 Add warning to job log, when requesting negative job cputime
• 3102 SLURMmod.pm: Better log errors instead of Perl warnings when unexpected values in control dir are found
• 3146 Undefined/unititialized values in infoprovider.log ubuntu 12.04
• 3161 JURA should have an own logfile
• 3184 Condor back-end reports suspended jobs as EXECUTED
• 3262 Configurable limits on data delivery servers
• 3264 Configurable tool for finding disk space for cache cleaner
• 3290 Report the number of cores used by job into the accounting log
• 3303 Down nodes cause SGEmod to fail
• 3353 inconsistent arcproxy parameter : -P is NOT a location (directory)
• 3355 LL v3 vs v4 parsing
• 3369 scan-sge-job should bail out if qacct is missing
• 3374 Multi-lib conflict
• 3375 Download/upload should fail when proxy is expired instead of retrying
• 3389 Using arcinfo without a proxy screws up terminal
• 3392 arccp -i fails to stage data from tape
• 3394 Dynamic output file limitation with EMI-ES
• 3395 scan-ll-job drops out of loop over jobs too soon
• 3396 DB_CDB_ALLDB error on Debian OS
• 3397 ARCJSDL unit test fails on OS X
• 3398 Building fails for distributions with glib2 >= 2.41.2
• 3399 Configuring the period of jura's calling from configuration
• 3400 SSM update to 2.1.3
• 3403 Bad response from sbatch causes a-rex crash
• 3404 Jura seems to generate different URs for OPS and FGI VOs - vo:Group section is missing for FGI.CSC.FI VO URs
• 3405 JSDL problem, IndividualPhysicalMemory
• 3410 llstatus -R gives ConsumableCpus*(32,32), not matched in LL.pm regexp
• 3411 inconsistent cache handling
• 3417 New filesystem clean cache
• 3419 acix-cache python traceback "Unhandled Error"
• 3420 Remote cache access: don't download from own cache
• 3425 ARC services support SSLv3 protocol
• 3428 acix-index does not logrotate
• 3429 /var/log/arc/bdii/bdii-update.log is never logrotated
• 3433 Publish authorised VOs per queue
• 3434 Slurm backend should use sacct
• 3435 Should be possible to specify host JURA is uploading from
• 3437 [ARC-CE JURA] There seems to be a wrong module import in /usr/share/arc/ssm/ssm2.py
• 3438 scan-condor-job is sometimes much too slow
• 3439 DTR doesn't verify supplied destination checksum
• 3440 processors for APEL not in diag
• 3441 bashism in /bin/sh script - Debian BTS #772283
• 3442 Too many objects duplicated and not being cleared in the ldap
• 3444 Starting information system service (nordugrid-arc-ldap-infosys) is unreliable
• 3445 ARC-CEs reporting different values to SGAS and APEL
• 3446 5.0-rc1 rpm .spec files contains errors
• 3449 a-rex dies from "glibmm-ERROR"
• 3452 CPU time limit incorrect for multi-core jobs (condor backend)
• 3453 Errors from logrotate when A-REX is not running
• 3455 ARC http transfer are slow due to limited buffer
• 3457 Accounting problem with PBS/torque for multi-core jobs

Packaging changes

No major packaging changes have taken place.

Configuration changes

• The following arc.conf options have been moved from the [grid-manager] section to the [data-staging] section: speedcontrol, securetransfer, passivetransfer, maxtransfertries, acix_endpoint, localtransfer, preferredpattern, copyurl, linkurl. Be sure to update configuration before restarting A-REX after the update.
• The new option cacheshared has been added to the [data-staging] section to enable better management of caches on filesystems shared with other data
• The new option cachespacetool has been added to the [data-staging] section to allow a user-specified tool for the cache cleaner to find file system space information.
• The new option httpgetpartial has been added to the [data-staging] section.
• The new option jobreport_logfile has been added to the [grid-manager]< section.

API changes

API changes from libraries version 4.2.0 to 5.0.0 are documented in NorduGrid Wiki.

Known issues

• There is a memory leak when using Java API for multiple job submission with files to BES interface.
• The CPU time is not measured correctly for jobs that kill the parent process, such as some agent-based/pilot (e.g., ALICE)
• JURA will not publish records to the APEL on a standard Debian/Ubuntu system, because the python-dirq package is not available for them. The workaround is to build this package from source.
• When using ARC client tools to submit jobs to CREAM, only JSDL can be used to describe jobs, and the broker type must be set to Null in the client.conf file
• ARC GUI (arcjobtool) is not available yet, pending implementation of client library changes.
• Standalone client tar-balls for Linux are not yet available.
• Bug 2905 is solved using workaround. Source of problem is not yet identified.
• JURA cannot send/store local user ids

Availability

Source

ARC release 15.03 consists of the following source packages:

• NorduGrid ARC, version 5.0.0 (main components)
• NorduGrid ARC Documents version 2.0.0
• metapackages for client tools, computing element and information index, version 1.0.7
• Nagios probes for ARC CE, version 1.8.2
• gangliarc - ARC Computing Element monitoring in ganglia, version 1.0.0
• Common authentication library caNl++, version 1.0.1

Source code for main components is available from:
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/nordugrid/arc1/tags/5.0.0

Documentation source (mostly LaTeX) is available from:
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/nordugrid/doc/tags/2.0.0

Source for metapackages is available from:
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/packaging/{fedora,debian}/nordugrid-arc-meta/tags/1.0.7

Source for Nagios probes is available from:
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/nordugrid/nagios/tags/release-1.8.2

Source for the common authentication library caNl++ is available from:
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/workarea/caNl++/tags/1.0.1

Source for gangliarc is available from::
http://svn.nordugrid.org/repos/nordugrid/contrib/gangliarc/tags/1.0.0

Repositories

See detailed description at NorduGrid downloads

These repositories provide binary packages for:

• Debian: 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 (i386 and amd64)
• Fedora: from 5 to 21 (i386 and x86_64)
• RedHat: EL5, EL6 (i386 and x86_64) and EL7 x86_64
• Ubuntu: 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04 and 14.10 (i386 and amd64)

Scientific Linux and CentOS are implicitly supported through corresponding RedHat repositories.