NORDUGRID-MANUAL-3

ARC v0.8 client installation instructions

This is a short client installation description. For more detailed instructions, please consult the relevant sections of the NorduGrid User Manual.

You must be logged into a Linux 2.x machine (Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, Ubuntu or SuSE are supported). NB! Your host name must be set properly, i.e., it must resolve to a proper IP address.

Standalone client  ~ System-wide client and Globus  ~ Build on top of existing Globus

Option 1:

Installing the standalone client locally (as a regular user without administrator privileges)

This method is recommended for users of publicly shared computers who have no administrator privileges. It allows installation of the ARC Grid client in any location, for example, in user's home directory or in any other place where she has write permissions. It is also a good method when you want to install simultaneously several versions of the client, as each of them can be installed independently, without overwriting each other.

The standalone ARC client contains the necessary third-party components (some Globus tools, VOMS, LFC etc) and does all the necessary initial configuration and setup.

Below, the numbers in brackets "< >" should be substituted with the actual version numbers depending on the distribution you downloaded.

Installation procedure:

  1. Get the pre-compiled standalone binary tarball from the NorduGrid Downloads area: use the "Quick start" option and select your platform. Typically, "stable" channel is recommended.
  2. Put the tarball in a directory of your choice and execute tar xvzf nordugrid-arc-standalone-<x.y.z>.tgz This will create a new directory nordugrid-arc-standalone-<x.y.z> and the tarball can hereafter safely be removed.
  3. Enter the unpacked directory: cd nordugrid-arc-standalone-<x.y.z>
  4. Setup the environment by executing one of the following:
    for bash or zsh: source setup.sh for csh or tcsh: source setup.csh for ksh or any other shell where the source command is not defined: . ./setup.sh Upon first execution, this will print a lot of informational output. Make sure there are no "error" or "failure" messages. Always use the source command or ., because the setup script has to affect variables in your current shell!
  5. Make sure you have a valid personal Grid certificate (typically located in $HOME/.globus/usercert.pem) and a private key ($HOME/.globus/userkey.pem). usercert.pem must be world-readable (Linux file access permissions 644), while userkey.pem must be readable only by the owner (mode 400).
    Acceptable certificates are issued by the national Certificate Authorities (CA) endorsed by the International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF). In case you have no certificate, find your respective authority through the IGTF Web site.
    ARC standalone comes pre-configured with the NorduGrid CA: that is, if you are a resident of a Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland or Sweden), you can generate the key and request the certificate using the following instruction: grid-cert-request -int DO NOT run grid-cert-request without the -int flag, as it will cause failure.

    For all other countries, please contact your national authority for instructions on how to obtain the certificate.

    Information: The standalone ARC client package includes credentials of most IGTF-affiliated CAs in
    nordugrid-arc-standalone-<x.y.z>/share/certificates
    This is necessary to use international Grid infrastructures (EGEE, WLCG, NDGF etc) based on the X509 security framework.
    NB: If your CA or other necessary CA credentials are absent from the package, you can always add missing certificates to
    nordugrid-arc-standalone-<x.y.z>/share/certificates
    If there are some CAs that are banned by your local policies, simply remove their files from the above mentioned directory. For more information about certificates and related things read "Grid Certificate Mini How-to".
  6. Fire up your certificate with grid-proxy-init or, if you are a member of a Virtual Organisation, voms-proxy-init
  7. For a quick check of your installation, issue an ngtest command: e.g.

    ngtest -R

  8. Have fun on the Grid!



Option 2:

Installing the NorduGrid client from binaries on a Linux 2.x box

You are going to install pre-compiled binary packages for ARC client and some necessary 3rd-party software.
If you are using an RPM-based system and are not a system administrator, read our "RPM for everybody" guide.

Installation using Linux repositories

This method is recommended for system administrators and notebook owners. One typically needs a system administrator privileges to use it, although there are limted possibilities to install the packages as a non-privileged user, see the note below.

For RedHat-based systems (RHEL, Fedora, SL, CentOS, ROCKS) and Debian-based systems (Debian, Ubuntu), NorduGrid offers package repositories. Most necessary 3rd party packages are available from recent standard Linux distributions. For older Linux versions, NorduGrid repositories provide all the necessary external packages.

For RHEL5 and its derivatives, enable the EPEL repository

Contrary to the standalone client, binary packages do not contain the necessary CA credentials, neither are the credentials pulled automaticaly from the repositories. You will have to instal the necessary CA credentials either from the IGTF tar-ball, from Yum repositories in case you use a RedHat-based Linux, or APT repositories if you use Debian/Ubuntu.

Using these repository-based methods, you will be able to receive automatic update notifications, if such are enabled on your system. If you do not use Yum or APT, please follow the instructions below.

Manual installation of binary packages

This method is strongly discouraged, because due to multiple 3rd-party dependencies of various softwares it is practically impossible to describe the installation and to keep it up-to-date. Even if well described, it may take quite some time to identify and download missing dependencies. Moreover, you will not get update notifications when new versions are released. It is therefore strongly recommended to use the repository-based method above.

Install the following packages (RPMs or DEBs):

These packages can be obtained from various sources:

Certificates and other post-installation procedures

  1. Verify that the variable GLOBUS_LOCATION, is set according to your Globus installation: unless you forced installation in a specific location, the default location should be /opt/globus.
  2. If you are a resident of a Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway or Sweden), get the following two packages necessary for Grid certificate creation. Otherwise, contact your local Certification Authority for certificate details.

    • ca_NorduGrid
    • ca_NorduGrid-certrequest-config
    These packages are available from the NorduGrid repositories.
  3. If you didn't do so already, install the necessary Certificate Authority (CA) credentials from the NorduGrid Downloads area ("igtf" folder). You need the credentials of that certificate authority (CA) which signed or will sign your personal certificate. Also, you need the credentials of all the CAs which have certified the services you want to use. For example, if your personal certificate is issued by a German CA, and you are going to access files in France, using CPUs in Sweden, you need the German, French and NorduGrid CA credentials.
  4. Re-login into a new shell, or type source /etc/profile.d/nordugrid.sh to setup the correct environment. If you are in a C-shell, use *.csh counterpart of the script above. If the source command is not defined in your shell, use . /etc/profile.d/nordugrid.sh Always use the source command or ., because the setup-scripts has to affect variables in your current shell!
  5. Make sure you have a valid personal Grid certificate (typically located in $HOME/.globus/usercert.pem) and a private key ($HOME/.globus/userkey.pem). usercert.pem must be world-readable (Linux file access permissions 644), while userkey.pem must be readable only by the owner (mode 400).
    Acceptable certificates are issued by the national Certificate Authorities (CA) endorsed by the International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF). In case you have no certificate, find your respective authority through the IGTF Web site.
    ARC standalone comes pre-configured with the NorduGrid CA: that is, if you are a resident of a Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland or Sweden), you can generate the key and request the certificate using the following instruction: grid-cert-request -int DO NOT run grid-cert-request without the -int flag, as it will cause failure.

    For all other countries, please contact your national authority for instructions on how to obtain the certificate.

  6. Fire up your certificate with grid-proxy-init or, if you are a member of a Virtual Organisation, voms-proxy-init
  7. For a quick check, issue an ngtest command: e.g. ngtest -R
  8. Have fun on the Grid!



Option 3:

Installing the NorduGrid client as root on your Linux 2.x box on top of an existing Globus installation

This method has not been tested on all Globus versions, and in general is not supported. It requires the entire NorduGrid ARC middleware to be re-built against your Globus installation.

Build and installation procedure:

See also detailed instructions on how to build the NorduGrid ARC middleware.

  1. Check that the variables GLOBUS_LOCATION, is set according to your Globus installation: unless you forced installation in a specific location, default location should be /opt/globus.
  2. Get from the NorduGrid Downloads area, "stable", "devel" or "nightly" channels the ARC source RPM nordugrid-arc-<x.y.z-1>.src.rpm and rebuild it: rpm --rebuild nordugrid-<x.y.z-1>.src.rpm Note: this will rebuild the entire ARC middleware -- not only the client.
  3. Install the created binary RPMs (for a client, you only need the nordugrid-arc-client RPM)
  4. Alternatively, you can grab a tarball containing the ARC source-code nordugrid-arc-<x.y.z>.tar.gz and follow the usual procedure: tar xvzf nordugrid-arc-<x.y.z>.tar.gz
    cd nordugrid-<x.y.z>
    ./configure
    make
    make install
    WARNING: this will install the entire ARC suite – not only the client.
  5. If you are a resident of a Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway or Sweden), get the following two packages necessary for Grid certificate creation. Otherwise, contact your local Certification Authority for certificate details.

    • ca_NorduGrid
    • ca_NorduGrid-certrequest-config
    These packages are available from the NorduGrid repositories.
  6. If you didn't do so already, install the necessary Certificate Authority (CA) credentials from the NorduGrid Downloads area ("igtf" folder). You need the credentials of that certificate authority (CA) which signed or will sign your personal certificate. Also, you need the credentials of all the CAs which have certified the services you want to use. For example, if your personal certificate is issued by a German CA, and you are going to access files in France, using CPUs in Sweden, you need the German, French and NorduGrid CA credentials.
  7. Re-login into a new shell, or type source /etc/profile.d/nordugrid.sh to setup the correct environment. If you are in a C-shell, use *.csh counterpart of the script above. If the source command is not defined in your shell, use . /etc/profile.d/nordugrid.sh Always use the source command or ., because the setup-scripts has to affect variables in your current shell!
  8. Make sure you have a valid personal Grid certificate (typically located in $HOME/.globus/usercert.pem) and a private key ($HOME/.globus/userkey.pem). usercert.pem must be world-readable (Linux file access permissions 644), while userkey.pem must be readable only by the owner (mode 400).
    Acceptable certificates are issued by the national Certificate Authorities (CA) endorsed by the International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF). In case you have no certificate, find your respective authority through the IGTF Web site.
    ARC standalone comes pre-configured with the NorduGrid CA: that is, if you are a resident of a Nordic country (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland or Sweden), you can generate the key and request the certificate using the following instruction: grid-cert-request -int DO NOT run grid-cert-request without the -int flag, as it will cause failure.

    For all other countries, please contact your national authority for instructions on how to obtain the certificate.

  9. Fire up your certificate with grid-proxy-init or, if you are a member of a Virtual Organisation, voms-proxy-init
  10. For a quick check, issue an ngtest command: e.g. ngtest -R
  11. Have fun on the Grid!