The UNICORE/X server is the central component of a UNICORE site. It hosts the services such as job submission, job management, storage access, and provides the bridge to the functionality of the target resources, e.g. batch systems or file systems.

For more information about UNICORE visit http://www.unicore.eu.

1. Getting started

1.1. Prerequisites

To run UNICORE/X, you need the OpenJDK or Oracle Java (JRE or SDK). We recommend using the latest version of Java 8.

If not installed on your system, you can download it from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

If using the Oracle Java, you also need to download and install the "Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files" available at the same website.

UNICORE/X has been most extensively tested on Linux-like systems, but runs on Windows and MacOS/X as well.

Please note that

  • to integrate into secure production environments, you will need access to a certificate authority and generate certificates for all your UNICORE servers.

  • to interface with a resource management system like SGE or Torque, you need to install and configure the UNICORE TSI.

  • to make your resources accessible outside of your firewalls, you should setup and configure a UNICORE Gateway.

All these configuration options will be explained in the manual below.

1.2. Installation

UNICORE/X can be installed from either a tar.gz or zip archive, or (on Linux) from rpm/deb packages.

To install from the tar.gz or zip archive, unpack the archive in a directory of your choice. You should then review the config files in the conf/ directory, and adapt paths, hostname and ports. The config files are commented, and you can also check [ux_configuration].

To install from a Linux package, please use the package manager of your system to install the archive.

Note

Using the Linux packages, you can install only a single UNICORE/X instance per machine (without manual changes). The tar.gz / zip archives are self contained, and you can easily install multiple servers per machine.

The following table gives an overview of the file locations for both tar.gz and Linux bundles.

Table 1. Directory Layout
Name in this manual tar.gz, zip rpm Description

CONF

<basedir>/conf/

/etc/unicore/unicorex

Config files

LIB

<basedir>/lib/

/usr/share/unicore/unicorex/lib

Java libraries

LOG

<basedir>/log/

/var/log/unicore/unicorex/

Log files

BIN

<basedir>/bin/

/usr/sbin/

Start/stop scripts

 — 

 — 

/etc/init.d/unicore-unicorex

Init script

1.2.1. Starting/Stopping

There are two scripts that expect to be run from the installation directory. To start, do

cd <basedir>
bin/start.sh

Startup can take some time. After a successful start, the log files (e.g. LOG/startup.log) contain a message "Server started." and a report on the status of any connections to other servers (e.g. the TSI or global registry).

To stop the server, do:

cd <basedir>
bin/stop.sh

Using the init script on Linux, you would do (as root)

etc/init.d/unicore-unicorex start|stop

1.2.2. Log files

UNICORE/X writes its log file(s) to the LOG directory. By default, log files are rolled daily, There is no automated removal of old logs, if required you will have to do this yourself.

Details about the logging configuration are given in [ux_logging].

2. Configuration of UNICORE/X

2.1. Overview of the main configuration options

UNICORE/X is a fairly complex software which has many interfaces to other UNICORE components and configuration options. This section tries to give an overview of what can and should be configured. The detailed configuration guide follows in the next sections.

2.1.1. Mandatory configuration

  • SSL certificates and basic security: UNICORE uses SSL certificates for all servers. For UNICORE/X these settungs are made in the wsrflite.xml config file

  • Attribute sources: various ways are available to assign local attributes to users, such as Unix user name, groups and role. For details, consult [use_aip].

  • Backend / target system access: to access a resource manager like SGE or Torque, the UNICORE TSI needs to be installed and UNICORE/X needs to be configured accordingly. Please consult [ux_xnjs].

UNICORE/X has several sub-components. These are configured using several config files residing in the CONF directory, see [ux_install] for the location of the CONF directory.

2.2. Config file overview

The following table indicates the main configuration files. Depending on configuration and installed extensions, some of these files may not be present, or more files may be present.

UNICORE/X watches some most configuration files for changes, and tries to reconfigure if they are modified, at least where possible. This is indicated in the "dynamically reloaded" column.

Table 2. UNICORE/X configuration files
config file usage dynamically reloaded

startup.properties

Java process settings (e.g. memory), lib/log/conf directories

no

uas.config

General settings, startup behaviour, storages, AIP setup

yes

wsrflite.xml

Services to be deployed, SSL settings, Web server settings

yes

simpleidb

Backend, installed applications, resources

yes

xnjs.xml

Back end properties when not using a UNICORE TSI

no

xnjs_legacy.xml

Back end properties preconfigured for the UNICORE TSI

no

logging.properties

logging levels, logfiles and their properties

yes

xacml2Policies/*.xml

Access control policy for securing the web services

yes, via xacml2.config (do touch xacml2.config to trigger)

xacml2.config

Configure the XACML2 access control component

yes

vo.config

Configure the use of Unity as an attribute source (optional)

no

simpleuudb

A file mapping user DNs to local attributes (optional)

yes

jmxremote.password

Access control file for remote monitoring using the Java management extensions (JMX)

no

2.3. Settings for the UNICORE/X process (e.g. memory)

The properties controlling the Java virtual machine running the UNICORE/X process are configured in

  • UNIX: the CONF/startup.properties configuration file

  • Windows: the "CONF\\wrapper.conf" configuration file

These properties include settings for maximum memory, and also the properties for configuring JMX, see [ux_admin] for more on JMX.

General

2.4. Config file formats

UNICORE/X uses two different formats for configuration.

2.4.1. Java properties

  • Each property can be assigned a value using the syntax "name=value"

  • Please do not quote values, as the quotes will be interpreted as part of the value

  • Comment lines are started by the "#"

  • Multiline values are possible by ending lines with "\", e.g.

      name=value1 \
      value2

In this example the value of the "name" property will be "value1 value2".

2.4.2. XML

Various XML dialects are being used, so please refer to the example files distributed with UNICORE for more information on the syntax. In general XML is a bit unfriendly to edit, and it is rather easy to introduce typos.

Note

It is advisable to run a tool such as xmllint after editing XML files to check for typos

2.5. UNICORE/X container configuration overview

The following table gives an overview of the basic settings for a UNICORE/X server. These can be set in uas.config or wsrflite.xml. Many of the settings (e.g. security) will be explained in more detail in separate sections.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.baseurl

string

-

Server URL as visible from the outside, usually the gateway’s address, including /services

container.client.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure clients created by the container. See separate documentation for details.

container.configfile

filesystem path

-

Allows to specify the location of XML configuration file of the USE container. Useful only in properties file.

container.deployment.dynamic

[true, false]

false

Controls whether dynamic deployment (at runtime) of services is enabled.

container.deployment.dynamic.jarDirectory

filesystem path

-

Directory with Jar files for dynamic deployment.

container.externalregistry.autodiscover

[true, false]

false

Whether to autodiscover registries using multicast (runtime updateable)

container.externalregistry.url*

list of properties with a common prefix

-

List of external registry URLs to register local services. (runtime updateable)

container.externalregistry.use

[true, false]

false

Whether the service should register itself in external registry(-ies), defined separately. (runtime updateable)

container.externalurl

string

-

Server URL as visible from the outside, usually the gateway’s address.

container.host

string

localhost

Server interface to listen on.

container.httpServer.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure container’s Jetty HTTP server. See separate documentation for details.

container.onstartup

string

-

Space separated list of runnables to be executed on server startup. It is preferred to use onstartup.

container.onstartup.<NUMBER>

list of properties with a common prefix

-

List of runnables to be executed on server startup.

container.onstartupSelftest

[true, false]

true

Controls whether to run tests of connections to external services on startup.

container.persistence.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure container’s persistence layer. See separate documentation for details.

container.port

integer [0 — 65535]

7777

Server listen port.

container.registry.globalAdvertise

[true, false]

false

If this server runs a global registry, this setting controls whether it is advertised using multicast.

container.resources.executor.idletime

integer number

60000

The timeout in millis for removing idle threads.

container.resources.executor.maxsize

integer number

32

The maximum thread pool size for the scheduled execution service

container.resources.executor.minsize

integer number

10

The minimum thread pool size for the scheduled execution service

container.resources.scheduled.idletime

integer number

60000

Timeout in millis for removing idle threads.

container.resources.scheduled.size

integer >= 1

3

Defines the thread pool size for the execution of scheduled services.

container.security.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure container’s security. See separate documentation for details.

container.servletpath

string

/services

Servlet context path. In most cases shouldn’t be changed.

container.sitename

string

DEMO-SITE

Short, human friendly, name of the target system, should be unique in the grid.

container.unicore.wsrflite.isPersistent[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

true

Global setting controlling persistence of WS-resources state. Additionally it can be used as a per-service setting, after appending a dot and service name to the property key.

container.wsrf.expirycheck.initial[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

120

The initial delay for WS-resource expiry checking (seconds). Additionally it can be used as a per-service setting, after appending a dot and service name to the property key.

container.wsrf.expirycheck.period[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

60

The interval for WS-resource expiry checking (seconds). Additionally it can be used as a per-service setting, after appending a dot and service name to the property key.

container.wsrf.instanceLockingTimeout[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

30

The timeout when attempting to lock WS-resources. Additionally it can be used as a per-service setting, after appending a dot and service name to the property key.

container.wsrf.lifetime.default[.*]

integer >= 1 can have subkeys

86400

Default lifetime of WS-resources (in seconds). Add dot and service name as a suffix of this property to set a default per particular service type.

container.wsrf.lifetime.maximum[.*]

integer >= 1 can have subkeys

-

Maximum lifetime of WS-resources (in seconds). Add dot and service name as a suffix of this property to set a limit per particular service type.

container.wsrf.maxInstancesPerUser[.*]

integer >= 1 can have subkeys

2147483647

Maximum number per user of WS-resource instances. Add dot and service name as a suffix of this property to set a limit per particular service type.

container.wsrf.persistence.persist

string

de.fzj.unicore.wsrflite.persistence.Persistence

Implementation used to maintain the persistence of WS-resources state.

container.wsrf.sg.defaulttermtime

integer >= 1

1800

The default termination time of service group entries in seconds.

2.6. Integration of UNICORE/X into a UNICORE infrastructure

Since UNICORE/X is the central component, it is interfaced to other parts of the UNICORE architecture, i.e. the Gateway and (optionally) a Registry.

2.6.1. Gateway

The gateway address is hard-coded into CONF/wsrflite.xml, using the "container.baseurl" property:

  <property name="container.baseurl"
            value="https://Gateway_HOST:Gateway_PORT/SITENAME/services"/>

where Gateway_HOST and Gateway_PORT are the host and port of the gateway, and SITENAME is the UNICORE/X site name. The gateway address MUST be accessible from the UNICORE/X node!

On the gateway side, the UNICORE/X address can be hard-coded as well, using an entry SITENAME=address in the connections.properties file pointing to the network address of the UNICORE/X container. In some scenarios, it is convenient to auto-register with a gateway. This can be enabled using the container.security.gateway.* Please check the gateway manual on how to configure the autoregistration on the gateway side.

2.6.2. Registry

It is possible to configure UNICORE/X to contact one or more external or "global" Registries in order to publish information on crucial services there. Most of the following properties deal with the automatic discovery and/or manual setup of the external registries being used.

For example

container.externalregistry.use=true
container.externalregistry.url=https://host1:8080/REGISTRY/services/Registry?res=default_registry
container.externalregistry.url2=https://host2:8080/BACKUP/services/Registry?res=default_registry

2.6.3. Unity

If you want to support certificate-less end user access via Unity, you have to configure UNICORE/X to trust one or more Unity servers. This is done using the container.security.trustedAssertionIssuers property. This configures a truststore containing the certificates of all trusted Unity servers (NOT the CA certificates).

For example, to configure a directory containing the trusted certificates in PEM format:

  <!-- configure trusted Unity certificates -->
  <property name="container.security.trustedAssertionIssuers.type"
            value="directory" />
  <property name="container.security.trustedAssertionIssuers.directoryLocations.1"
            value="conf/unity/unity.pem" />

All the usual options for configuring truststores are available here, as well, as described in Section .

Note

To enable certificate-less end user access, you will also need to disable client-authentication in the Gateway, please refer to the Gateway manual.

2.7. Startup code

In order to provide a flexible initialization process for UNICORE/X, there is a set of properties named "container.onstartup.*". The value(s) of this property consists of a whitespace separated list of Java classes which must be implementing the "Runnable" interface. Many extensions for UNICORE/X rely on an entry in this property to initialise themselves.

Table 3. Startup code
class name description usage

de.fzj.unicore.uas.util.DefaultOnStartup

initialises the job management system and the "local" registry; should usually be run on startup

normal UNICORE/X servers

de.fzj.unicore.bes.util.BESOnStartup

initialises the OGSA-BES job management system

UNICORE/X servers that expose BES services

com.intel.gpe.gridbeans.PublishGridBeanService

if available, publishes the GridBeanService to the registry

UNICORE/X servers that host a Gridbean service

de.fzj.unicore.uas.util.CreateSMSOnStartup

creates and deploys a single instance of the SMS that is shared between users, named default_storage

if a shared storage is required

2.8. Security

2.8.1. Overview

Security is a complex issue, and many options exist. On a high level, the following items need to be configured.

  • SSL setup (keystore and truststore settings for securing the basic communication between components)

  • Attribute sources configuration which assign an authorisation role, UNIX login, group and other properties to Grid users. UNICORE knows several attribute sources which can be combined using various combining algorithms. These are configured in the uas.config file. Due to the complexity, the description of the configuration options can be found in [use_aip].

  • Access control setup (controlling in detail who can do what on which services). Again, several options exist, which are described in [use_pdp].

  • Message level security (message signatures). UNICORE can be configured (and is so by default) to require digital signatures on important messages (like job submissions or file exports). When enabled UNICORE guarantees non-repudiation, i.e. the client can not deny that it invoked the operation. Check the table below for the option allowing to disable this feature to have a bit better performance.

2.8.2. General security options

This table presents all security related options, except credential and truststore settings which are described in the subsequent section.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.security.accesscontrol[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

true

Controls whether access checking (authorisation) is enabled. Can be used per service after adding dot and service name to the property key. (runtime updateable)

container.security.accesscontrol.pdp

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.wsrflite.security.pdp.UnicoreXPDP

-

Controls which Policy Decision Point (PDP, the authorisation engine) should be used. Default value is determined as follows: if eu.unicore.uas.pdp.local.LocalHerasafPDP is available then it is used. If not then this option becomes mandatory.

container.security.accesscontrol.pdpConfig

filesystem path

-

Path of the PDP configuration file

container.security.attributes[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Prefix used for configurations of particular attribute sources.

container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy

string

MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES

What algorithm should be used for combining the attributes from multiple attribute sources (if more then one is defined).

container.security.attributes.order

string

-

Attribute sources in invocation order.

container.security.credential.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure the credential used by the container. See separate documentation for details.

container.security.defaultVOs.<NUMBER>

list of properties with a common prefix

empty string

List of default VOs, which should be assigned for a request without a VO set. The first VO on the list where the user is member will be used.

container.security.delegationTruststore.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

When separateDelegationTruststore is true allows to configure the trust delegation truststore (using normal truststore properties with this prefix).

container.security.dynamicAttributes[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Prefix used for configurations of particular dynamic attribute sources.

container.security.dynamicAttributes.combiningPolicy

string

MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES

What algorithm should be used for combining the attributes from multiple dynamic attribute sources (if more then one is defined).

container.security.dynamicAttributes.order

string

-

Dynamic attribute sources in invocation order.

container.security.gateway.certificate

filesystem path

-

Path to gateway’s certificate file in PEM or DER format. Note that DER format is used only for files with .der extension. It is used only for gateway’s authentication assertions verification (if enabled). Note that this is not needed to set it if waiting for gateway on startup is turned on.

container.security.gateway.checkSignature

[true, false]

true

Controls whether gateway’s authentication assertions are verified.

container.security.gateway.enable

[true, false]

true

Whether to accpet gateway-based authentication. Note that if it is enabled either the site must be secured (usually via firewall) to disable non-gateway access or the verification of gateway’s assertions must be enabled.

container.security.gateway.registration

[true, false]

false

Whther the site should try to autoregister itself with the Gateway. This must be also configured on the Gateway side.

container.security.gateway.registrationUpdateInterval

integer >= 10

30

How often the automatic gateway registration should be refreshed.

container.security.gateway.waitOnStartup

[true, false]

true

Controls whether to wait for the gateway at startup.

container.security.gateway.waitTime

integer >= 1

180

Controls for how long to wait for the gateway on startup (in seconds).

container.security.rest[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Prefix used to configure REST subsystem security. See separate docs.

container.security.separateDelegationTruststore

[true, false]

false

Significant for XSEDE integration: when turned on, allows for using a separate truststore for delegation checking then the one used for SSL connections checking.

container.security.sessionLifetime

integer >= 1

28800

Controls the lifetime of security sessions (in seconds).

container.security.sessionsEnabled

[true, false]

true

Controls whether the server supports security sessions which reduce client/server traffic and load.

container.security.sessionsPerUser

integer >= 1

5

Controls the number of security sessions each user can have. If exceeded, some cleanup will be performed.

container.security.signatures

[true, false]

false

Controls whether signatures (providing non-repudiation guarantees) on key requests should be required. If the system is setup without user certificates, signatures must be disabled.

container.security.sslEnabled

[true, false]

true

Controls whether secure SSL mode is enabled.

container.security.trustedAssertionIssuers.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Allows for configuring a truststore (using normal truststore properties with this prefix) with certificates of trusted services (not CAs!) which are permitted to issue trust delegations and authenticate with SAML. Typically this truststore should contain certificates of all Unity instanes installed.

container.security.truststore.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties with this prefix are used to configure container’s trust settings and certificates validation. See separate documentation for details.

2.8.3. Credential and truststore settings

These properties are used to configure the server’s credential (used to make outgoing SSL connections) and truststore. The truststore controls which incoming SSL connections are accepted.

We recommend using a credential in PKCS12 or .pem format, and a directory containing .pem files as truststore.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.security.credential.path

filesystem path

mandatory to be set

Credential location. In case of jks, pkcs12 and pem store it is the only location required. In case when credential is provided in two files, it is the certificate file path.

container.security.credential.format

[jks, pkcs12, der, pem]

-

Format of the credential. It is guessed when not given. Note that pem might be either a PEM keystore with certificates and keys (in PEM format) or a pair of PEM files (one with certificate and second with private key).

container.security.credential.password

string

-

Password required to load the credential.

container.security.credential.keyPath

string

-

Location of the private key if stored separately from the main credential (applicable for pem and der types only),

container.security.credential.keyPassword

string

-

Private key password, which might be needed only for jks or pkcs12, if key is encrypted with different password then the main credential password.

container.security.credential.keyAlias

string

-

Keystore alias of the key entry to be used. Can be ignored if the keystore contains only one key entry. Only applicable for jks and pkcs12.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.security.truststore.allowProxy

[ALLOW, DENY]

ALLOW

Controls whether proxy certificates are supported.

container.security.truststore.type

[keystore, openssl, directory]

mandatory to be set

The truststore type.

container.security.truststore.updateInterval

integer number

600

How often the truststore should be reloaded, in seconds. Set to negative value to disable refreshing at runtime. (runtime updateable)

--- Directory type settings ---

container.security.truststore.directoryConnectionTimeout

integer number

15

Connection timeout for fetching the remote CA certificates in seconds.

container.security.truststore.directoryDiskCachePath

filesystem path

-

Directory where CA certificates should be cached, after downloading them from a remote source. Can be left undefined if no disk cache should be used. Note that directory should be secured, i.e. normal users should not be allowed to write to it.

container.security.truststore.directoryEncoding

[PEM, DER]

PEM

For directory truststore controls whether certificates are encoded in PEM or DER. Note that the PEM file can contain arbitrary number of concatenated, PEM-encoded certificates.

container.security.truststore.directoryLocations.*

list of properties with a common prefix

-

List of CA certificates locations. Can contain URLs, local files and wildcard expressions. (runtime updateable)

--- Keystore type settings ---

container.security.truststore.keystoreFormat

string

-

The keystore type (jks, pkcs12) in case of truststore of keystore type.

container.security.truststore.keystorePassword

string

-

The password of the keystore type truststore.

container.security.truststore.keystorePath

string

-

The keystore path in case of truststore of keystore type.

--- Openssl type settings ---

container.security.truststore.opensslNewStoreFormat

[true, false]

false

In case of openssl truststore, specifies whether the trust store is in openssl 1.0.0+ format (true) or older openssl 0.x format (false)

container.security.truststore.opensslNsMode

[GLOBUS_EUGRIDPMA, EUGRIDPMA_GLOBUS, GLOBUS, EUGRIDPMA, GLOBUS_EUGRIDPMA_REQUIRE, EUGRIDPMA_GLOBUS_REQUIRE, GLOBUS_REQUIRE, EUGRIDPMA_REQUIRE, EUGRIDPMA_AND_GLOBUS, EUGRIDPMA_AND_GLOBUS_REQUIRE, IGNORE]

EUGRIDPMA_GLOBUS

In case of openssl truststore, controls which (and in which order) namespace checking rules should be applied. The REQUIRE settings will cause that all configured namespace definitions files must be present for each trusted CA certificate (otherwise checking will fail). The AND settings will cause to check both existing namespace files. Otherwise the first found is checked (in the order defined by the property).

container.security.truststore.opensslPath

filesystem path

/etc/grid-security/certificates

Directory to be used for opeenssl truststore.

--- Revocation settings ---

container.security.truststore.crlConnectionTimeout

integer number

15

Connection timeout for fetching the remote CRLs in seconds (not used for Openssl truststores).

container.security.truststore.crlDiskCachePath

filesystem path

-

Directory where CRLs should be cached, after downloading them from remote source. Can be left undefined if no disk cache should be used. Note that directory should be secured, i.e. normal users should not be allowed to write to it. Not used for Openssl truststores.

container.security.truststore.crlLocations.*

list of properties with a common prefix

-

List of CRLs locations. Can contain URLs, local files and wildcard expressions. Not used for Openssl truststores. (runtime updateable)

container.security.truststore.crlMode

[REQUIRE, IF_VALID, IGNORE]

IF_VALID

General CRL handling mode. The IF_VALID setting turns on CRL checking only in case the CRL is present.

container.security.truststore.crlUpdateInterval

integer number

600

How often CRLs should be updated, in seconds. Set to negative value to disable refreshing at runtime. (runtime updateable)

container.security.truststore.ocspCacheTtl

integer number

3600

For how long the OCSP responses should be locally cached in seconds (this is a maximum value, responses won’t be cached after expiration)

container.security.truststore.ocspDiskCache

filesystem path

-

If this property is defined then OCSP responses will be cached on disk in the defined folder.

container.security.truststore.ocspLocalResponders.<NUMBER>

list of properties with a common prefix

-

Optional list of local OCSP responders

container.security.truststore.ocspMode

[REQUIRE, IF_AVAILABLE, IGNORE]

IF_AVAILABLE

General OCSP ckecking mode. REQUIRE should not be used unless it is guaranteed that for all certificates an OCSP responder is defined.

container.security.truststore.ocspTimeout

integer number

10000

Timeout for OCSP connections in miliseconds.

container.security.truststore.revocationOrder

[CRL_OCSP, OCSP_CRL]

OCSP_CRL

Controls overal revocation sources order

container.security.truststore.revocationUseAll

[true, false]

false

Controls whether all defined revocation sources should be always checked, even if the first one already confirmed that a checked certificate is not revoked.

2.9. Configuring the XNJS and TSI

Information on the configuration of the XNJS and TSI backend can be found in [ux_xnjs].

2.10. Configuring storage services

Information on the configuration of the storage factory service, shared storages and per-user storages attached to target systems can be found in [ux_storages].

2.11. HTTP proxy, timeout and web server settings

The UNICORE Services Environment container has a number of settings related to the web server and to the HTTPClient library used for outgoing HTTP(s) calls.

The server options are shown in the following table.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.httpServer.CORS_allowedHeaders

string

*

CORS: comma separated list of allowed HTTP headers (default: any)

container.httpServer.CORS_allowedMethods

string

GET,PUT,POST,DELETE,HEAD

CORS: comma separated list of allowed HTTP verbs.

container.httpServer.CORS_allowedOrigins

string

*

CORS: allowed script origins.

container.httpServer.CORS_chainPreflight

[true, false]

false

CORS: whether preflight OPTION requests are chained (passed on) to the resource or handled via the CORS filter.

container.httpServer.CORS_exposedHeaders

string

Location,Content-Type

CORS: comma separated list of HTTP headers that are allowed to be exposed to the client.

container.httpServer.disabledCipherSuites

string

empty string

Space separated list of SSL cipher suites to be disabled. Names of the ciphers must adhere to the standard Java cipher names, available here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/security/SunProviders.html#SupportedCipherSuites

container.httpServer.enableCORS

[true, false]

false

Control whether Cross-Origin Resource Sharing is enabled. Enable to allow e.g. accesing REST services from client-side JavaScript.

container.httpServer.enableHsts

[true, false]

false

Control whether HTTP strict transport security is enabled. It is a good and strongly suggested security mechanism for all production sites. At the same time it can not be used with self-signed or not issued by a generally trusted CA server certificates, as with HSTS a user can’t opt in to enter such site.

container.httpServer.fastRandom

[true, false]

false

Use insecure, but fast pseudo random generator to generate session ids instead of secure generator for SSL sockets.

container.httpServer.gzip.enable

[true, false]

false

Controls whether to enable compression of HTTP responses.

container.httpServer.gzip.minGzipSize

integer number

100000

Specifies the minimal size of message that should be compressed.

container.httpServer.highLoadConnections

integer number

200

If the number of connections exceeds this amount, then the connector is put into a special low on resources state. Existing connections will be closed faster. Note that the server will also go to the low on resources mode if there are no available threads in the pool. You can set this to 0 to disable the connections limit (and have only thread pool size governed limit). If set to a negative number then the low on resources mode won’t be used at all.

container.httpServer.lowResourceMaxIdleTime

integer >= 1

100

In low resource conditions, time (in ms.) before an idle connection will time out.

container.httpServer.maxIdleTime

integer >= 1

200000

Time (in ms.) before an idle connection will time out. It should be large enough not to expire connections with slow clients, values below 30s are getting quite risky.

container.httpServer.maxThreads

integer number

255

Maximum number of threads to have in the thread pool for processing HTTP connections. Note that this number will be increased with few additional threads to handle connectors.

container.httpServer.minThreads

integer >= 1

1

Minimum number of threads to have in the thread pool for processing HTTP connections. Note that this number will be increased with few additional threads to handle connectors.

container.httpServer.requireClientAuthn

[true, false]

true

Controls whether the SSL socket requires client-side authentication.

container.httpServer.soLingerTime

integer number

-1

Socket linger time.

container.httpServer.wantClientAuthn

[true, false]

true

Controls whether the SSL socket accepts (but does not require) client-side authentication.

container.httpServer.xFrameAllowed

string

http://localhost

URI origin that is allowed to embed web interface inside a (i)frame. Meaningful only if the xFrameOptions is set to allowFrom. The value should be in the form: http[s]://host[:port]

container.httpServer.xFrameOptions

[deny, sameOrigin, allowFrom, allow]

deny

Defines whether a clickjacking prevention should be turned on, by insertionof the X-Frame-Options HTTP header. The allow value disables the feature. See the RFC 7034 for details. Note that for the allowFrom you should define also the xFrameAllowed option and it is not fully supported by all the browsers.

The client options are the following

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

container.client.digitalSigningEnabled

[true, false]

true

Controls whether signing of key web service requests should be performed.

container.client.httpAuthnEnabled

[true, false]

false

Whether HTTP basic authentication should be used.

container.client.httpPassword

string

empty string

Password for use with HTTP basic authentication (if enabled).

container.client.httpUser

string

empty string

Username for use with HTTP basic authentication (if enabled).

container.client.inHandlers

string

empty string

Space separated list of additional handler class names for handling incoming WS messages

container.client.maxWsCallRetries

integer number

3

Controls how many times the client should try to call a failing web service. Note that only the transient failure reasons cause the retry. Note that value of 0 enables unlimited number of retries, while value of 1 means that only one call is tried.

container.client.messageLogging

[true, false]

false

Controls whether messages should be logged (at INFO level).

container.client.outHandlers

string

empty string

Space separated list of additional handler class names for handling outgoing WS messages

container.client.securitySessions

[true, false]

true

Controls whether security sessions should be enabled.

container.client.serverHostnameChecking

[NONE, WARN, FAIL]

WARN

Controls whether server’s hostname should be checked for matching its certificate subject. This verification prevents man-in-the-middle attacks. If enabled WARN will only print warning in log, FAIL will close the connection.

container.client.sslAuthnEnabled

[true, false]

true

Controls whether SSL authentication of the client should be performed.

container.client.wsCallRetryDelay

integer number

10000

Amount of milliseconds to wait before retry of a failed web service call.

--- HTTP client settings ---

container.client.http.allow-chunking

[true, false]

true

If set to false, then the client will not use HTTP 1.1 data chunking.

container.client.http.connection-close

[true, false]

false

If set to true then the client will send connection close header, so the server will close the socket.

container.client.http.connection.timeout

integer number

20000

Timeout for the connection establishing (ms)

container.client.http.maxPerRoute

integer number

6

How many connections per host can be made. Note: this is a limit for a single client object instance.

container.client.http.maxRedirects

integer number

3

Maximum number of allowed HTTP redirects.

container.client.http.maxTotal

integer number

20

How many connections in total can be made. Note: this is a limit for a single client object instance.

container.client.http.socket.timeout

integer number

0

Socket timeout (ms)

--- HTTP proxy settings ---

container.client.http.nonProxyHosts

string

-

Space (single) separated list of hosts, for which the HTTP proxy should not be used.

container.client.http.proxy.password

string

-

Relevant only when using HTTP proxy: defines password for authentication to the proxy.

container.client.http.proxy.user

string

-

Relevant only when using HTTP proxy: defines username for authentication to the proxy.

container.client.http.proxyHost

string

-

If set then the HTTP proxy will be used, with this hostname.

container.client.http.proxyPort

integer number

-

HTTP proxy port. If not defined then system property is consulted, and as a final fallback 80 is used.

container.client.http.proxyType

string

HTTP

HTTP proxy type: HTTP or SOCKS.

3. Administration

3.1. Controlling UNICORE/X memory usage

You can set a limit on the number of service instances (e.g. jobs) per user. This allows you to make sure your server stays nicely up and running even if flooded by jobs. To enable, edit CONF/wsrflite.xml and add properties, e.g.

  <property name="unicore.maxInstancesPerUser.JobManagement" value="200"/>
  <property name="unicore.maxInstancesPerUser.FileTransferBFT" value="20"/>

The last part of the property name is the service name as defined in wsrflite.xml.

When the limits are reached, the server will report an error to the client (e.g. when trying to submit a new job).

3.2. Logging

UNICORE uses the Log4j logging framework (http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/), which supports many useful options, such as logging to the server’s syslog (on Linux). Log4j is configured using a config file. By default, this file is CONF/logging.properties. To change the default, edit the start script (CONF/startup.properties) or, on Windows, the CONF/wrapper.conf. The config file is specified with a Java property log4j.configuration.

Note

You can change the logging configuration at runtime by editing the logging.properties file. The new configuration will take effect a few seconds after the file has been modified.

By default, log files are written to the the LOGS directory.

The following example config file configures logging so that log files are rotated daily.

# Set root logger level to INFO and its only appender to A1.
log4j.rootLogger=INFO, A1

# A1 is set to be a rolling file appender with default params
log4j.appender.A1=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.A1.File=logs/uas.log

#configure daily rollover: once per day the uas.log will be copied
#to a file named e.g. uas.log.2008-12-24
log4j.appender.A1.DatePattern='.'yyyy-MM-dd

# A1 uses the PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [%t] %-5p %c{1} %x - %m%n
Note

In Log4j, the log rotation frequency is controlled by the DatePattern. Check http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/apidocs/org/apache/log4j/DailyRollingFileAppender.html for the details.

Within the logging pattern, you can use special variables to output information. In addition to the variables defined by Log4j (such as %d), UNICORE defines several variables related to the client and the current job.

Variable Description

%X{clientName}

the distinguished name of the current client

%X{jobID}

the unique ID of the currently processed job

A sample logging pattern might be

log4j.appender.A1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [%X{clientName}] [%X{jobID}] [%t] %-5p %c{1} %x - %m%n

For more info on controlling the logging we refer to the log4j documentation:

Log4j supports a very wide range of logging options, such as date based or size based file rollover, logging different things to different files and much more. For full information on Log4j we refer to the publicly available documentation, for example the Log4j manual.

3.2.1. Logger categories, names and levels

Logger names are hierarchical. In UNICORE, prefixes are used (e.g. "unicore.security") to which the Java class name is appended. For example, the XUUDB connector in UNICORE/X logs to the "unicore.security.XUUDBAuthoriser" logger.

Therefore the logging output produced can be controlled in a fine-grained manner. Log levels in Log4j are (in increasing level of severity) TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, amd FATAL.

For example, to debug a security/authorisation problem in the UNICORE/X security layer, you can set

log4j.logger.unicore.security=DEBUG

If you are just interested in XUUDB related output, you can set

log4j.logger.unicore.security=INFO
log4j.logger.unicore.security.XUUDBAuthoriser=DEBUG

so the XUUDBAuthoriser will log on DEBUG level, while the other security components log on INFO level.

Here is a table of the various logger categories

Log category Description

unicore

All of UNICORE

unicore.security

Security layer

unicore.services

Service operational information

unicore.services.jobexecution

Information related to job execution

unicore.services.jobexecution.USAGE

Usage logging (see next section)

unicore.xnjs

XNJS subsystem (execution engine)

unicore.xnjs.tsi

TSI subsystem (batch system connector)

unicore.client

Client calls (to other servers)

unicore.wsrflite

Underlying services environment (WSRF framework)

org.apache.cxf

Web service toolkit (Apache CXF)

Note

Please take care to not set the global level to TRACE or DEBUG for long times, as this will produce a lot of output.

3.2.2. Usage logging

Often it is desirable to keep track of the usage of your UNICORE site. The UNICORE/X server has a special logger category called unicore.services.jobexecution.USAGE which logs information about finished jobs at INFO level. If you wish to enable this, set

log4j.logger.unicore.services.jobexecution.USAGE=INFO
Note

If you are setting up a production environment and need a sophisticated accounting solution (featuring database with a real resources consumption, WWW interface and possibility to produce reports or aggregated data) then consider deploying UNICORE RUS Accounting. Further instructions can be found in [xnjs-accounting].

It might be convenient to send usage output to a different file than normal log output. This is easily achieved with log4j:

# send usage logger output to a separate file

# use separate appender 'U1' for usage info
log4j.logger.unicore.services.jobexecution.USAGE=INFO,U1

# U1 is set to be a rolling file appender with default params
log4j.appender.U1=org.apache.log4j.DailyRollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.U1.File=logs/usage.log
# U1 uses the PatternLayout
log4j.appender.U1.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.U1.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [%t] %-5p %c{1} %x - %m%n

For each finished job, the usage logger will log a line with the following information (if available)

[result] [executable] [actionUUID] [clientDN] [BSSJobId] [clientXlogin] [jobName] [machineName] [VOs]

An example output line is:

2011-08-16 10:00:39,513 [XNJS-1-JobRunner-1] INFO  USAGE  - [SUCCESSFUL] [ /bin/date] [ e9deab79-af1f-4704-a6bd-427b3ab20969] [CN=Bernd Schuller, OU=VSGC, OU=Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, O=GridGermany, C=DE] [82942] [schuller] [Date job submitted using UCC] [zam025c02.zam.kfa-juelich.de] []

3.2.3. Message logging

If you are interested in the low-level messages that are exchanged between client and server, you can enable message logging.

For the usual SOAP/WSRF services, you need to configure handlers in the wsrflite.xml

  <!-- log incoming messages -->
  <globalHandler type="in"
                 class="eu.unicore.security.wsutil.client.LogInMessageHandler"/>

  <!-- log outgoing messages -->
  <globalHandler type="out"
                 class="eu.unicore.security.wsutil.client.LogOutMessageHandler"/>

which will cause UNICORE/X to log all messages that are received and sent by all WS services. It is also possible to log only messages by a particular service, by adding the handler definition to a service definition:

For example:

  <service name="TargetSystemService" wsrf="true" persistent="true">
    <interface class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.TargetSystem"/>
    <implementation class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.tss.TargetSystemHomeImpl"/>
    <handler type="in" class="eu.unicore.security.wsutil.client.LogInMessageHandler"/>
    <handler type="out" class="eu.unicore.security.wsutil.client.LogOutMessageHandler"/>
  </service>

Since UNICORE/X can also act as a client, e.g. when talking to other services, you might also want to enable logging of client messages:

  <property name="container.client.messageLogging" value="true"/>

To actually see the messages in the log, the log level of the org.apache.cxf logger has to be set to at least to INFO.

3.3. Administration and monitoring

The health of a UNICORE/X container, and things like running services, lifetimes, etc. can be monitored in several ways.

3.3.1. Commandline client (UCC)

It is possible to use the UNICORE commandline client (UCC) to list jobs, extend lifetimes, etc.

The trick is to configure UCC so that it uses the server certificate of the UNICORE/X server, so that UCC will have administrator rights. Also you should connect directly to UNICORE/X, not to the registry as usual. Here is an example UCC configuration file. Say your UNICORE/X server is running on myhost on port 7777, your preferences file would look like this

registry=https://myhost:7777/services/Registry?res=default_registry

# use UNICORE/X keystore
credential.path=/path/to/unicorex/keystore
credential.password=...

# truststore config omitted

Note that the registry URL points directly to the UNICORE/X server, not to a gateway.

Examples

Some UCC commands that are useful are the list-jobs, list-sites and wsrf commands. Using list-jobs you can search for jobs with given properties, whereas the wsrf command allows to look at any resource, or even destroy resources.

To list all jobs on the server belonging to a specific user, do

ucc list-jobs -f Log contains <username>

where username is some unique part of the user’s DN, or the xlogin. Similarly, you can filter based on other properties of the job.

The wsrf command can be used to destroy resources, extend their lifetime and look at their properties. Please see "ucc wsrf -h" for details.

Try

ucc wsrf getproperties https://myhost:7777/services/TargetSystemFactory?res=default_target_system_factory

3.3.2. The Admin web service

The Admin service is a powerful tool to get "inside information" about your server using the UCC (or possibly another UNICORE client) and run one of the available "admin actions", which provide useful functions.

If you have enabled the admin service, you can do

ucc admin-info -l

to get information about available admin services. Note that you need to have role "admin" to invoke the admin service. The output includes information about the available administrative commands. To run one of these, you can use the admin-runcommand command. For example, to temporarily disable job submission

ucc admin-runcommand ToggleJobSubmission

3.3.3. Java Management Extensions (JMX)

Using the Java Management Extensions, you can monitor any Java virtual machine using (for example) a program called "jconsole" that is part of the Sun/Oracle Java SDK. It allows to check memory and thread usage, as well as access to application specific management components ("MBeans").

Enabling access

Connecting to a running Java VM locally is always possible, however remote access needs to be specially configured. To enable remote access to JMX, please check the startup.properties file of UNICORE/X. There several system properties are defined that enable and configure remote access via JMX.

#
#enable JMX (use jconsole to connect)
#
OPTS=$OPTS" -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote"
#enable JMX remote access protected by username/password
OPTS=$OPTS" -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9128 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true"
OPTS=$OPTS" -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false"
OPTS=$OPTS" -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=conf/jmxremote.password"

The password file "conf/jmxremote.password" must contain lines of the form "username=password", and must have its permissions set to "rw for owner only" (at least on Unix).

Using jconsole, you can now connect from a remote machine.

3.4. Migration of a UNICORE/X server to another physical host

If you want to migrate a UNICORE/X server to another host, there are several things to consider. The hostname and port are listed in CONF/wsrflite.xml and usually in the Gateway’s connection.properties file. These you will have to change. Otherwise, you can copy the relevant files in CONF to the new machine. Also, the persisted state data needs to be moved to the new machine, if it is stored on the file system. If it is stored in a database, there is nothing to be done. If you are using a Perl TSI, you might need to edit the TSI’s properties file and update the tsi.njs_machine property.

4. Security concepts in UNICORE/X

This section describes the basic security concepts and architecture used in UNICORE/X. The overall procedure performed by the security infrastructure can be summarised as follows:

  • the incoming message is authenticated by the SSL layer

  • extract the information used for authorisation from the message sent to the server. This information includes: originator of the message(in case the message passed through a UNICORE gateway), trust delegation tokens, incoming VO membership assertions, etc.

  • deal with trust delegation

  • generate or lookup attributes to be used used for authorisation in the configured attribute sources

  • perform policy check by executing a PDP request

All these steps can be switched on/off, and use pluggable components. Thus, the security level of a UNICORE/X server is widely configurable

4.1. Security concepts

4.1.1. Identity

A server has a certificate, which is used to identify the server when it makes a web service request. This certificate resides in the server keystore, and can be configured in the usual config file (see [ux_configuration]).

4.1.2. Security tokens

When a client makes a request to UNICORE/X, a number of tokens are read from the message headers. These are placed in the security context that each WSRF instance has. Currently, tokens are the certificates for the UNICORE consignor and user, if available. Also, trust delegation assertions are read, and it is checked if the message is signed.

4.1.3. Resource ownership

Each service is owned by some entity identified by a distinguished name (X500 Principal). By default, the server is the owner. When a resource is created on user request (for example when submitting a job), the user is the owner.

4.1.4. Trust delegation

When the user and consignor are not the same, UNICORE/X will check whether the consignor has the right to act on behalf of the user. This is done by checking whether a trust delegation assertion has been supplied and is valid.

4.1.5. Attributes

UNICORE/X retrieves user attributes using either a local component or a remote service. In the default configuration, the XUUDB attribute service is contacted. See [use_aip] for more information.

4.1.6. Policy checks

Each request is checked based on the following information.

  • available security tokens

  • the resource owner

  • the resource accessed (e.g. service name + WSRF instance id)

  • the activity to be performed (the web method name such as GetResourceProperty)

The validation is performed by the PDP (Policy Decision Point). The default PDP uses a list of rules expressed in XACML 2.0 format that are configured for the server. The [use_pdp] describes how to configure different engines for policy evaluation including a remote one.

4.1.7. Authorisation

A request is allowed, if the PDP allows it, based on the user’s attributes.

4.1.8. Proxy certificate support

UNICORE clients can be configured to create a proxy certificate and send it to the server. On the server, the proxy can be used to invoke GSI-based tools. Please read [ux_proxies] about the configuration details.

5. Attribute sources

The authorization process in UNICORE/X requires that each Grid user (identified by an X.509 certificate or just the DN) is assigned some attributes such as her role. Attributes are also used to subsequently incarnate the authorized user and possibly can be used for other purposes as well (for instance for accounting).

Therefore the most important item for security configuration is selecting and maintaining a so called attribute source (called sometimes attribute information point, AIP), which is used by USE to assign attributes to Grid users.

Several attribute sources are available, that can even be combined for maximum flexibility and administrative control.

There are two kinds of attribute sources:

  • Classic or static attribute sources, which are used BEFORE authorization. Those attribute sources maintain a simple mappings of user certificates (or DNs) to some attributes. The primary role of those sources is to provide attributes used for authorization, but also incarnation attributes may be assigned.

  • Dynamic attribute sources, which are used AFTER authorization, only if it was successful. Therefore these attribute sources can assign only the incarnation attributes. The difference is that attributes are collected for already authorized users, so the attributes can be assigned in dynamic way not only using the user’s identity but also all the static attributes. This feature can be used for assigning pool accounts for authorized users or adding additional supplementary gids basing on user’s Virtual Organization.

5.1. UNICORE incarnation and authorization attributes

Note that actual names of the attributes presented here are not very important. Real attribute names are defined by attribute source (advanced attribute sources, like Unity/SAML attribute source, even provide a possibility to choose what attribute names are mapped to internal UNICORE attributes). Therefore it is only important to know the concepts represented by the internal UNICORE attributes. On the other hand the values which are defined below are important.

The attributes in UNICORE can be multi-valued.

There are two special authorization attributes:

  • role - represents an abstract user’s role. The role is used in a default (and rarely changed) UNICORE authorization policy and in authorization process in general. There are several possible values that are recognized by the default authorization policy:

  • user - value specifies that the subject is allowed to use the site as a normal user (submit jobs, get results, …)

  • admin - value specifies that the subject is an administrator and may do everything. For example may submit jobs, get results of jobs of other users and even delete them.

  • banned - user with this role is explicitly banned and all her request are denied.

  • trustedAgent - this value is used to express that the subject may act as any user the subject wants. E.g. if John has this role then can get Marry’s job results and also submit job as Frank. It is highly suggested not to use this role, its support is minimal mostly for backwards compatibility.

  • anything else - means that user is not allowed to do anything serious. Some very basic, read-only operations are allowed, but this is a technical detail. Also access to owned resources is granted, what can happen if the user had the user role before. Typically it is a good practice to use value banned in such case.

  • virtualOrganisations - represents an abstract, Grid group of the user. By default it is not used directly anywhere in the core stack, but several subsystems (as dynamic attribute sources or jobs accounting) may be configured to use it.

There are several attributes used for incarnation:

  • xlogin - specifies what local user id (in UNIX called uid) should be assigned for the grid user.

  • group - specifies the primary group (primary gid) that the grid user should get.

  • supplementaryGroups - specifies all supplementary groups the grid user should get.

  • addDefaultGroups - boolean attribute saying whether groups assigned to the Xlogin (i.e. the local uid of the grid user) in the operating system should be additionally added for the grid user.

  • queue - override IDB queues setting for the particular user, defining available BSS queues.

Finally UNICORE can consume other attributes. All other attributes can be used only for authorization or in more advanced setups (for instance using the Unicore/X incarnation tweaker). Currently all such additional attributes which are received from attribute source are treated as XACML attributes and are put into XACML evaluation context. This feature is rather rarely used, but it allows for creating a very fine grained authorization policies, using custom attributes.

Particular attribute source define how to assign these attribute to users. Not always all types of attributes are supported by the attribute source, e.g. XUUDB can not define (among others) per-user queues or VOs.

After introducing all the special UNICORE attributes, it must be noted that those attributes are used in two ways. Their primary role is to strictly define what is allowed for the user. For instance the 'Xlogin' values specify the valid uids from which the user may choose one. One exception here is Add operating system groups - user is always able to set this according to his/her preference.

The second way of using those attributes is to specify the default behavior, when the user is not expressing a preference. E.g. a default Group (which must be single valued) specify which group should be used, if user doesn’t provide any.

Attribute sources define the permitted values and default values for the attributes in various ways. Some use conventions (e.g. that first permitted value is a default one), some use a pair of real attributes to define the valid and default values of one UNICORE attribute.

5.2. Configuring Attribute Sources

Note

The following description is for configuring the classic, static attribute sources. However everything written here applies also to configuration of the dynamic sources: the only difference is that instead of container.security.attributes. property prefix, the container.security.dynamicAttributes. should be used.

Note

The full list of options related to attribute sources is available here: [use-secref].

To configure the static attribute sources, the container.security.attributes.order property in the configuration file is used. This is a space-separated list with attribute sources names, where the named attribute sources will be queried one after the other, allowing you to query multiple attribute sources, override values etc.

A second property, container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy, allows you to control how attributes from different sources are combined.

For example, the following configuration snippet

#
# Authorisation attribute source configuration
#
container.security.attributes.order=XUUDB FILE

#
# Combining policy
#
# MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES (default), FIRST_APPLICABLE, FIRST_ACCESSIBLE or  MERGE
container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy=MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES

will declare two attribute sources, "XUUDB" and "FILE", which should be both queried and combined using the MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES policy.

Since multiple attribute sources can be queried, it has to be defined how attributes will be combined. For example, assume you have both XUUDB and FILE, and both return a xlogin attribute for a certain user, say "xlogin_1" and "xlogin_2".

The different combining policies are

  • MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES : new attributes override those from previous sources. In our example, the result would be "xlogin_2".

  • FIRST_APPLICABLE : the attributes from the first source that returned a non empty list of attributes are used. In our case this would be "xlogin_1". If there were no xlogin attribute for the user in XUUDB then "xlogin_2" would be returned.

  • FIRST_ACCESSIBLE : the attributes from the first source that is accessible are used. In our case this would be "xlogin_1". This policy is useful for redundant attribute sources. E.g. you can configure two instances of XUUDB with the same users data; the 2nd one will be tried only if the first one is down.

  • MERGE : attributes are merged. In our example, the result would be "xlogin_1, xlogin_2", and the user would be able to choose between them.

Each of the sources needs a mandatory configuration option defining the Java class, and several optional properties that configure the attribute source. In our example, one would need to configure both the "XUUDB" and the "FILE" source:

container.security.attributes.XUUDB.class=...
container.security.attributes.XUUDB.xuudbHost=...
...

container.security.attributes.FILE.class=...
container.security.attributes.FILE.file=...
...

Additionally you can mix several combining policies together, see "Chained attribute source" below for details.

5.3. Available attribute sources

5.3.1. XUUDB

The XUUDB is the standard option in UNICORE. It has the following features:

  • Web service interface for querying and administration. It is suitable for serving data for multiple clients. Usually it is deployed to handle attributes for a whole grid site.

  • Access can be protected by a client-authenticated SSL

  • XUUDB can store static mappings of grid users: the local xlogin, role and project attributes (where project maps to Unix groups)

  • XUUDB since version 2 can also assign attributes in a dynamic way, e.g. from pool accounts.

  • Multiple xlogins per certificate or DN, where the user can select one

  • Entries are grouped using the so-called Grid component ID (GCID). This makes it easy to assign users different attributes when accessing different UNICORE/X servers.

Full XUUDB documentation is available from http://www.unicore.eu/documentation/manuals/xuudb

To enable and configure the XUUDB as a static attribute source, set the following properties in the configuration file:

container.security.attributes.order=... XUUDB ...
container.security.attributes.XUUDB.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.XUUDBAuthoriser
container.security.attributes.XUUDB.xuudbHost=https://<xuudbhost>
container.security.attributes.XUUDB.xuudbPort=<xuudbport>
container.security.attributes.XUUDB.xuudbGCID=<your_gcid>

To enable and configure the XUUDB as a dynamic attribute source, set the following properties in the configuration file:

container.security.dynamicAttributes.order=... XUUDB ...
container.security.dynamicAttributes.XUUDB.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.xuudb.XUUDBDynamicAttributeSource
container.security.dynamicAttributes.XUUDB.xuudbHost=https://<xuudbhost>
container.security.dynamicAttributes.XUUDB.xuudbPort=<xuudbport>

5.3.2. SAML Virtual Organizations aware attribute source (e.g. Unity or VOMS)

UNICORE supports SAML attributes, which can be either fetched by the server or pushed by the clients, using a Virtual Organisations aware attribute source. In the most cases Unity is deployed as a server providing attributes and handling VOs, as it supports all UNICORE features and therefore offers a greatest flexibility, while being simple to adopt. SAML attributes can be used only as a static attribute source.

The SAML attribute source is described in a separate section: [use_vo].

5.3.3. File attribute source

In simple circumstances, or as an addition to a XUUDB or Unity, the file attribute source can be used. As the name implies a simple map file is used to map DNs to xlogin, role and other attributes (only static mappings are possible). It is useful when you don’t want to setup an additional service (XUUDB or Unity) and also when you want to locally override attributes for selected users (e.g. to ban somebody).

To use, set

container.security.attributes.order=... FILE ...
container.security.attributes.FILE.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.file.FileAttributeSource
container.security.attributes.FILE.file=<your map file>
container.security.attributes.FILE.matching=<strict|regexp>

The map file itself has the following format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fileAttributeSource>
   <entry key="USER DN">
      <attribute name="role">
         <value>user</value>
      </attribute>
      <attribute name="xlogin">
         <value>unixuser</value>
         <value>nobody</value>
         ...
      </attribute>
      ...
   </entry>
   ...
</fileAttributeSource>

You can add an arbitrary number of attributes and attribute values.

The matching option controls how a client’s DN is mapped to a file entry. In strict mode, the canonical representation of the key is compared with the canonical representation of the argument. In regexp mode the key is considered a Java regular expression and the argument is matched with it. When constructing regular expressions a special care must be taken to construct the regular expression from the canonical representation of the DN. The canonical representation is defined here. (but you don’t have to perform the two last upper/lower case operations). In 90% of all cases (no multiple attributes in one RDN, no special characters, no uncommon attributes) it just means that you should remove extra spaces between RDNs.

The evaluation is simplistic: the first entry matching the client is used (which is important when you use regular expressions).

The attributes file is automatically refreshed after any change, before a subsequent read. If the syntax is wrong then an error message is logged and the old version is used.

Recognized attribute names are:

  • xlogin

  • role

  • group

  • supplementaryGroups

  • addOsGroups (with values true or false)

  • queue

Attributes with those names (case insensitive) are handled as special UNICORE incarnation attributes. The correspondence should be straightforward, e.g. the xlogin is used to provide available local OS user names for the client.

For all attributes except of the supplementaryGroups the default value is the first one provided. For supplementaryGroups the default value contains all defined values.

You can also define other attributes - those will be used as XACML authorization attributes, with XACML string type.

5.3.4. Chained attribute source

Chained attribute source is a meta source which allows you to mix different combining policies together. It is configured as other attribute sources with two parameters (except of its class): order and combiningPolicy. The result of the chain attribute source is the set of attributes returned by the configured chain.

Let’s consider the following example situation where we want to configure two redundant Unity servers (both serving the same data) to achieve high availability. Additionally we want to override settings for some users using a local file attribute source (e.g. to ban selected users, by assigning them the banned role).

# The main chain configuration:
container.security.attributes.order=UNITY_CLUSTER FILE
container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy=MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES

# The FILE source cfg:
container.security.attributes.FILE.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.file.FileBasedAuthoriser
container.security.attributes.FILE.file=<your map file>

# The UNITY_CLUSTER is a sub chain:
container.security.attributes.UNITY_CLUSTER.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.security.util.AttributeSourcesChain
container.security.attributes.UNITY_CLUSTER.order=UNITY1 UNITY2
container.security.attributes.UNITY_CLUSTER.combiningPolicy=FIRST_ACCESSIBLE

# And configuration of the two real sources used in the sub chain:
container.security.attributes.UNITY1.class=...
...
container.security.attributes.UNITY2.class=...
...

6. RESTful services

6.1. Authentication

RESTful services have additional options for configuring user authentication, which will check the supplied credentials and map the user to a distinguished name (DN).

The configuration can be done in uas.config or wsrflite.xml, here we show the uas.config version (properties file syntax).

The enabled authentication options and their order are configured similarly to the attribute sources, using

container.security.rest.authentication.order=FILE UNITY UNITY-OAUTH X509

Note: you can use one or more authentication methods, UNICORE will try all configured authentication options.

6.1.1. Username-password file

To use a file containing username, password and the DN,

container.security.rest.authentication.FILE.class=eu.unicore.services.rest.security.FilebasedAuthenticator
container.security.rest.authentication.FILE.file=conf/rest-users.txt

The file format is

#
# on each line:
# username:hash:salt:DN
#
demouser:<...>:<...>:CN=Demo User, O=UNICORE, C=EU

i.e. each line gives the username, the hashed password, the salt and the user’s DN, separated by colons. To generate entries, i.e. to hash the password correctly, the md5sum utility can be used. For example, if your intended password is test123, you could do

$> SALT=$(tr -dc "A-Za-z0-9_$&!=+#" < /dev/urandom | head -c 16 | xargs)
$> echo "Salt is ${SALT}"
$> echo -n "${SALT}test123" | md5sum

which will output the salted and hashed password. Here we generate a random string as the salt. Enter these together with the username, and the DN of the user into the password file.

6.1.2. Unity authentication using username/password

You can also hook up with Unity, passing on the username/password and retrieving an authentication assertion.

container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY.class=eu.unicore.services.rest.security.UnitySAMLAuthenticator
container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY.address=https://localhost:2443/unicore-soapidp/saml2unicoreidp-soap/AuthenticationService
# validate the received assertions?
container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY.validate=true

6.1.3. Unity authentication using OAuth2 Bearer token

To enable the OAuth2 support, use the following classname and check that the Unity address points to the OAuth endpoint. In Unity terms, this is the endpoint of type "SAMLUnicoreSoapIdP" that uses the authenticator of type "oauth-rp with cxf-oauth-bearer".

container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY-OAUTH.class=eu.unicore.services.rest.security.UnityOAuthAuthenticator
container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY-OAUTH.address=https://localhost:2443/unicore-soapidp-oidc/saml2unicoreidp-soap/AuthenticationService
# validate the received assertions?
container.security.rest.authentication.UNITY-OAUTH.validate=true

6.1.4. X.509 certificate

If your client has an X.509 end-user certificate, you can use this to authenticate to the REST API.

container.security.rest.authentication.order=X509

container.security.rest.authentication.X509.class=eu.unicore.services.rest.security.X509Authenticator

NOTE that this requires Gateway 7.3.0 or later.

6.2. Delegation

If the REST service needs to work on behalf of the user, you MUST use Unity for authentication. When using password or X509 authentication, there is currently no support for delegation.

7. The UNICORE persistence layer

UNICORE stores its state in data bases. The information that is stored includes

  • user’s resources (instances of storage, job and other services)

  • jobs

  • workflows

depending on the services that are running in the container.

The job directories themselves reside on the target system, but UNICORE keeps additional information (like, which Grid user owns a particular job).

The data on user resources is organised by service name, i.e. each service (for example, JobManagement) stores its information in a separate database table (having the same name as the service, e.g. "JobManagement").

The UNICORE persistence layer offers three kinds of storage:

  • on the filesystem of the UNICORE/X server (using the H2 database engine), which is generally the default;

  • on a database server (MySQL, Cassandra, or the "server mode" of H2);

  • in-memory, i.e. all info is lost on server restart.

While the first one is very easy to setup, and easy to manage, the second option allows advanced setups like clustering/load balancing configurations involving multiple UNICORE/X servers sharing the same persistent data. Using MySQL has the additional benefit that the server starts up much faster.

Data migration from one database system to another is in principle possible, but you should select the storage carefully before going into production. In general, if you do not require clustering/load balancing, you should choose the default filesystem option, since it is less administrative effort.

7.1. Configuring the persistence layer

Peristence properties are configured in two files:

  • wsrflite.xml for all service data

  • xnjs.xml (or xnjs_legacy.xml) for job data

It is recommended to specify a configuration file using the persistence.config property. Thus, persistence configuration can be easily shared between the job (XNJS) data and other service data. If the "persistence.config" property is set, the given file will be read as a Java properties file, and the properties will be used.

Note

All properties can be specified on a "per table" basis, by appending ".<TABLENAME>" to the property name. This means you can even select different storage systems for different data, e.g. store service data on the filesystem and jobs in MySQL. The table name is case-sensitive.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

persistence.cache.enable[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

true

Enable caching.

persistence.cache.maxSize[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

10

Maximum number of elements in the cache (default: 10).

persistence.class[.*]

string can have subkeys

de.fzj.unicore.persist.impl.H2Persist

The persistence implementation class, which controls with DB backend is used.

persistence.cluster.config[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Clustering configuration file.

persistence.cluster.enable[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

false

Enable clustering mode.

persistence.config

filesystem path

-

Allows to specify a separate properties file containing the persistence configuration.

persistence.database[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

The name of the database to connect to (e.g. when using MySQL).

persistence.directory[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

The directory for storing data (embedded DBs).

persistence.driver[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

The database driver. If not set, the default one for the chosen DB backend is used.

persistence.h2.cache_size[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

1024

(H2) Cache size.

persistence.h2.options[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

(H2) Further options separated by ;.

persistence.h2.server_mode[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

false

(H2) Connect to a H2 server.

persistence.host[.*]

string can have subkeys

localhost

The database host.

persistence.index.basedir[.*]

string can have subkeys

/tmp

The base directory for storing the Lucene index files.

persistence.index.enable[.*]

[true, false] can have subkeys

false

Whether to enable the Lucene indexer.

persistence.max_connections[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

1

Connection pool maximum size.

persistence.mysql.tabletype[.*]

string can have subkeys

MyISAM

(MySQL) Table type (engine) to use.

persistence.password[.*]

string can have subkeys

empty string

The database password.

persistence.pool_timeout[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

3600

Connection pool timeout when trying to get a connection.

persistence.port[.*]

integer number can have subkeys

3306

The database port.

persistence.user[.*]

string can have subkeys

sa

The database username.

7.1.1. Caching

By default, caching of data in memory is enabled. It can be switched off and configured on a per-table (i.e. per entity class) basis. If you have a lot of memory for your server, you might consider increasing the cache size for certain components.

For example, to set the maximum size of the JOBS cache to 1000, you’d configure

persistence.cache.maxSize.JOBS=1000

7.1.2. The H2 engine

H2 is a pure Java database engine. It can be used in embedded mode (i.e. the engine runs in-process), or in server mode, if multiple UNICORE servers should use the same database server. For more information, visit http://www.h2database.com

Connection URL

In embedded mode (i.e. the default non-server mode), the connection URL is constructed from the configuration properties as follows

  jdbc:h2:file:<persistence.directory>/<table_name>

In server mode, the connection URL is constructed as follows

  jdbc:h2:tcp://<persistence.host>:<persistence.port>/<persistence.directory>/<table_name>

7.1.3. The MySQL Engine

The MySQL database engine does not need an introduction. To configure its use for UNICORE persistence data, you need to set

persistence.class=de.fzj.unicore.persist.impl.MySQLPersist

To use MySQL, you need access to an installed MySQL server. It is beyond the scope of this guide to describe in detail how to setup and operate MySQL. The following is a simple sequence of steps to be performed for setting up the required database structures.

  • open the mysql console

  • create a dedicated user, say unicore who will connect from some server in the domain "yourdomain.com" or from the local host:

CREATE USER 'unicore'@'%.yourdomain.com' identified by 'some_password' ;
CREATE USER 'unicore'@'localhost' identified by 'some_password' ;
  • create a dedicated database for use by the UNICORE/X server:

CREATE DATABASE 'unicore_data_demo_site';
USE 'unicore_data_demo_site';
  • allow the unicore user access to that database:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON 'unicore_data_demo_site.*' to 'unicore'@'localhost';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON 'unicore_data_demo_site.*' to 'unicore'@'%.yourdomain.com';

The UNICORE persistence properties would in this case look like this:

persistence.class=de.fzj.unicore.persist.impl.MySQLPersist
persistence.database=unicore_data_demo_site
persistence.user=unicore
persistence.password=some_password
persistence.host=<your_mysql_host>
persistence.port=<your_mysql_port>
persistence.mysql.tabletype=MyISAM

If you want to store data from multiple UNICORE servers, make sure to use a different database for each of them.

7.1.4. Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra is a "no-SQL" database, which is designed for easy horizontal scaling, and has many attractive features such as a powerful SQL-like query language. Please visit http://cassandra.apache.org for more info.

To configure its use for UNICORE persistence data, you need to set

persistence.class=de.fzj.unicore.persist.impl.CassandraPersist

To use Cassandra, you need access to an installed Cassandra server. It is beyond the scope of this guide to describe in detail how to setup and operate Cassandra.

The UNICORE persistence properties would in this case look like this:

persistence.class=de.fzj.unicore.persist.impl.CassandraPersist
persistence.database=unicore_data_demo_site
persistence.host=localhost
persistence.port=9042

The "persistence.database" corresponds to the Cassandra "keyspace" that will be used for the UNICORE data. If you want to store data from multiple UNICORE servers, make sure to use a different keyspace for each of them.

7.2. Clustering

If you intend to run a configuration with multiple UNICORE servers accessing a shared database, you need to enable clustering mode by setting a property

persistence.cluster.enable=true

The clustering config file can be set using a (per-table) property

persistence.cluster.config=<path to config file>

If this is not set, a default configuration is used.

For clustering, the Hazelcast library is used (https://hazelcast.org/documentation). A basic TCP based configuration is

  <hazelcast xmlns="http://www.hazelcast.com/schema/config">
    <group>
        <name>persistence-dev</name>
        <password>dev-pass</password>
    </group>
    <network>
        <port auto-increment="true">5701</port>
        <join>
            <multicast enabled="false"/>
            <tcp-ip enabled="true">
                <!-- list other members of the cluster -->
                <member>127.0.0.1</member>
                <member>some.host.org</member>
            </tcp-ip>
        </join>
    </network>
  </hazelcast>

The most important part is the "tcp-ip" setting, which must list at least one other node in the cluster. The "group" setting allows to run multiple clusters on the same set of hosts, just make sure that the group name is the same for all nodes in a cluster.

8. Configuring the XNJS

The XNJS is the UNICORE/X component that deals with the actual job execution and file access. It is configured using an XML file named xnjs.xml or xnjs_legacy.xml. The actual file that is used is set in the uas.config property coreServices.targetsystemfactory.xnjs.configfile.

#
# in uas.config
#
coreServices.targetsystemfactory.xnjs.configfile=conf/xnjs.xml

Here’s an overview of the most important properties that can be set in this file.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

XNJS.allowUserExecutable

[true, false]

true

Whether to allow user-defined executables. If set to false, only applications defined in the IDB may be run.

XNJS.autosubmit

[true, false]

false

Automatically submit a job to the BSS without waiting for an explicit client start.

XNJS.bssResubmitCount

integer >= 1

3

How often should UNICORE/X try to submit a job to the BSS.

XNJS.bssResubmitDelay

integer >= 1

10

Minimum delay (in seconds) between attempts to submit a job to the BSS.

XNJS.filespace

string

-

Directory on the TSI for the job directories. Must be world read/write/executable.

XNJS.idbfile[.*]

string can have subkeys

conf/simpleidb

IDB configuration.

XNJS.incarnationTweakerConfig

string

not set

Path to configuration file for the incarnation tweaker subsystem. If not set, the subsystem will be disabled.

XNJS.localtsi[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties for configuring the embedded Java TSI (if used). See separate docs.

XNJS.numberofworkers

integer >= 0

4

Number of XNJS worker threads.

XNJS.parameterSweepLimit

integer >= 0

1000

Upper limit for number of jobs generated in a single parameter sweep.

XNJS.staging[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties for configuring the data staging and I/O components. See separate docs.

XNJS.staging.filesystemGraceTime

integer >= 1

10

Grace time (in seconds) when waiting for files to appear on shared filesystems.

XNJS.statedir

string

data/NJSSTATE

Directory on the UNICORE/X machine for storing XNJS state.

XNJS.strictUserInputChecking

[true, false]

true

Whether to be restrictive in checking user-supplied arguments and environment variables. Set to true if you do not want ANY user code to run on your TSI node.

XNJS.tsiclass

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.tsi.TSI

de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.simple.LocalTS

Java class name of the TSI implementation.

Most of the other settings in this file are used to configure the internals of the XNJS and should usually be left at their default values.

8.1. The UNICORE TSI

This section describes installation and usage of the UNICORE TSI. This is a mandatory step if you want to interface to batch systems such as Torque, SGE, or LoadLeveller to efficiently use a compute cluster.

Note

Without this component, all jobs will run on the UNICORE/X server, under the user id that started UNICORE/X.

In a nutshell, you have to perform the following steps

  • Install the UNICORE TSI on your cluster front end node

  • Edit the tsi.properties file

  • On the UNICORE/X server, edit uas.config, simpleidb and xnjs_legacy.xml

  • Start the newly installed TSI (as root in a multiuser setting)

  • Restart UNICORE/X

8.1.1. Installation of the correct TSI

The TSI is a service that is running on the target system. In case of a cluster system, you’ll need to install it on the frontend machine(s), i.e. the machine from where your jobs are submitted to the batch system. There are different variants available for the different batch systems such as Torque or SGE.

Usually installation and start of the TSI will be performed as the root user. The TSI will then be able to change to the current Grid user’s id for performing work (Note: nothing will ever be executed as "root"). You can also use a normal user, but then all commands will be executed under this user’s id.

As the TSI is a central and sensitive service, make sure to read its documentation. This guide serves just as a quick overview of the necessary steps.

  • First, download and install the UNICORE TSI package. The UNICORE core server bundle ("quickstart" package) includes the TSI in the tsi subdirectory. You should copy this folder to the correct machine first. In the following this will be denoted by <tsidir>

  • Install the correct TSI variant by

 cd <tsidir>
  ./Install.sh

When prompted for the path, choose an appropriate on, denoted <your_tsi> in the following

  • Check the TSI configuration, especially command locations, path settings etc.

8.1.2. Required TSI Configuration

Configuration is done by editing <tsi_conf_dir>/tsi.properties At least check the following settings:

# UNICORE/X machine
tsi.njs_machine=<UNICORE/X host>

# UNICORE/X listener port (check unicorex/conf/xnjs_legacy.xml variable "CLASSICTSI.replyport"
tsi.njs_port=7654

# TSI listener port (check unicorex/conf/xnjs_legacy.xml variable "CLASSICTSI.port"
tsi.my_port=4433

8.1.3. UNICORE/X configuration

Edit unicorex/conf/uas.config and set the variable

coreServices.targetsystemfactory.xnjs.configfile=conf/xnjs_legacy.xml

Edit unicorex/conf/xnjs_legacy.xml. Check the filespace location, this is where the local job directories will be created. On a cluster, these have to be on a shared part of the filesystem.

Check the CLASSICTSI related properties. Set the correct value for the machine and the ports (these can usually be left at their default values). The CLASSICTSI.machine property is a comma separated list of machines names or IP addresses. Optionally, a port number can be added to each entry, separated from the machine by a colon. The XNJS will establish connections to each of these machines and ports in a round-robin fashion to ensure that jobs can be submitted and job statuses retrieved even if one of the TSI instances is unavailable. Should the port not be given along with the machine, CLASSICTSI.port will be used as a default.

When using a older TSI (pre 7.5.0):

Set the value of CLASSICTSI.TSI_LS to the path of the tsi_ls file as noted above. Set the value of CLASSICTSI.TSI_DF to the path of the tsi_df file as noted above.

Here is an example section for the classic TSI properties.

    <eng:Property name="XNJS.tsiclass" value="de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.legacy.LegacyTSI"/>
    <!-- TSI machine and ports used -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.machine" value="localhost,192.168.42.42:4434"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.port" value="4433"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.replyport" value="7654"/>
    <!-- for TSI < 7.5: location of the tsi scripts -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.TSI_LS" value="tsi/tsi_ls"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.TSI_DF" value="tsi/tsi_df"/>
    <!-- commands on the target system -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.CP" value="/bin/cp"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.RM" value="/bin/rm"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.MV" value="/bin/mv"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.MKDIR" value="/bin/mkdir -p"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.CHMOD" value="/bin/chmod"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.MKFIFO" value="/usr/bin/mkfifo"/>
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.PERL" value="/usr/bin/perl"/>
    <!-- interval between updates of job stati (milliseconds) -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.statusupdate.interval" value="30000"/>
    <!-- how often the XNJS will re-try to get the status of a job
         in case the job is not listed in the status listing -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.statusupdate.grace" value="0"/>
    <!-- a user that is allowed to see all jobs on the batch system -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.priveduser" value="someuser"/>
    <!-- I/O buffer size, will greatly impact filetransfer performance -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.BUFFERSIZE" value="1000000"/>

    <!-- the next two settings control execution on the cluster
         login node -->
    <!-- to disallow execution of user applications on the login node,
         set the following to 'true' -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.interactive_execution.disable" value="false"/>

8.1.4. Communication parameters

Some additional parameters exist for tuning the XNJS-TSI communication.

Table 4. XNJS-TSI communication settings
property name range of values default value description

CLASSICTSI.BUFFERSIZE

integer

1000000

Buffersize for filetransfers in bytes

CLASSICTSI.socket.timeout

integer

300000

Socket timeout in milliseconds

CLASSICTSI.socket.connect.timeout

integer

10000

Connection timeout in milliseconds

8.1.5. Tuning the batch system settings

UNICORE uses the normal batch system commands (e.g. qstat) to get the status of running jobs. There is a special case if a job is not listed in the qstat output. UNICORE will then assume the job is finished. However, in some cases this is not true, and UNICORE will have a wrong job status. To work around, there is a special property

 <!-- how often the XNJS will re-try to get the status of a job
      in case the job is not listed in the status listing -->
 <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.statusupdate.grace" value="2"/>

If the value is larger than zero, UNICORE will re-try to get the job status.

Note

When changing TSIs, it’s a good idea to remove the UNICORE/X state and any files before restarting. See [ux_persistence] for details

8.1.6. Enabling SSL for the XNJS to TSI communication

The UNICORE/X server can be set up to use SSL for communicating with the UNICORE TSI. On the UNICORE/X side, this is very simple to switch on. In the XNJS config file, set the following property to false (by default it is set to true):

    <!-- enable SSL -->
    <eng:Property name="CLASSICTSI.ssl.disable" value="false"/>

To setup the TSI side, please refer to the TSI manual!

8.1.7. Using an SSH tunnel for the XNJS to TSI communication

In the special case that the XNJS callback port is not accessible from the TSI server, you may want to use an SSH tunnel configuration. For example, this case occurs if the TSI is running in a different location (e.g. an Amazon cloud) than the UNICORE/X server.

The following configuration items in the xnjs.xml file are used to configure the tunnel.

    <!-- tunnel TSI connections via SSH - see REMOTETSI.* properties below! -->
    <eng:LoadComponent>de.fzj.unicore.uas.sshtsi.SSHTSIConnectionFactory</eng:LoadComponent>

    <!-- remote user name (default: root) -->
    <eng:Property name="REMOTETSI.user" value="root"/>
    <!-- SSH key to use for connecting -->
    <eng:Property name="REMOTETSI.keypath" value="/home/you/.ssh/id_rsa"/>
    <eng:Property name="REMOTETSI.keypass" value="your_secret_passphrase"/>
    <!-- remote SSH port (default: 22) -->
    <eng:Property name="REMOTETSI.sshport" value="22"/>

The UNICORE/X server will establish an SSH tunnel to the host(s) configured in the "CLASSICTSI.machine" property. Of course, the remote host’s SSHD server must accept the given key for authenticating the user configured in "REMOTETSI.user".

8.1.8. TSI configuration parameter reference

Here is a full list of TSI-related parameters.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

CLASSICTSI.BUFFERSIZE

integer >= 1

1048576

Buffer size (in bytes) for transferring data from/to the TSI.

CLASSICTSI.CD

string

cd

Unix cd command.

CLASSICTSI.CHGRP

string

/bin/chgrp

Unix chgrp command.

CLASSICTSI.CHMOD

string

/bin/chmod

Unix chmod command.

CLASSICTSI.CP

string

/bin/cp

Unix cp command.

CLASSICTSI.FSID

string

-

TSI filesystem identifier which uniquely identifies the file system. The default value uses the CLASSICTSI.machine property.

CLASSICTSI.GROUPS

string

groups

Unix groups command.

CLASSICTSI.LN

string

/bin/ln -s

Unix ln command.

CLASSICTSI.MKDIR

string

/bin/mkdir -p

Unix directory creation command.

CLASSICTSI.MKFIFO

string

/bin/mkfifo

Unix mkfifo command.

CLASSICTSI.MV

string

/bin/mv

Unix mv command.

CLASSICTSI.PERL

string

/usr/bin/perl

Perl interpreter.

CLASSICTSI.PS

string

ps -e

Command to get the process list on the TSI node.

CLASSICTSI.RM

string

/bin/rm

Unix rm command.

CLASSICTSI.RMDIR

string

/bin/rm -rf

Unix directory removal command.

CLASSICTSI.TSI_DF

string

/usr/share/unicore/tsi/perl/tsi_df

(TSI < 7.5.0 only) Perl script to get the free disk space (see TSI manual)

CLASSICTSI.TSI_LS

string

/usr/share/unicore/tsi/perl/tsi_ls

(TSI < 7.5.0 only) Perl script to create a directory listing (see TSI manual)

CLASSICTSI.UMASK

string

umask

Unix umask command.

CLASSICTSI.interactive_execution.disable

[true, false]

false

Disable execution of user commands on the TSI node.

CLASSICTSI.interactive_execution.maxtime

integer number

-1

Limit the run time of user commands on the TSI node (-1 means no limit).

CLASSICTSI.limitTSIConnections

integer number

-1

Limit the number of TSI worker processes created by this UNICORE/X (-1 means no limit).

CLASSICTSI.machine

string

localhost

TSI host(s) or IP address(es). Specify multiple hosts in the format machine1[:port1],machine2[:port2],…

CLASSICTSI.pooledTSIConnections

integer >= 1

4

How many TSI worker processes per TSI host to keep (even if idle).

CLASSICTSI.port

integer >= 1

4433

TSI port to connect to.

CLASSICTSI.priveduser

string

unicore

Account used for getting statuses of all batch jobs (cannot be root).

CLASSICTSI.replyport

integer >= 1

7654

Reply port on UNICORE/X server.

CLASSICTSI.socket.connect.timeout

integer >= 1

10000

Connection timeout on when establishing the TSI connection.

CLASSICTSI.socket.timeout

integer >= 1

180000

Read timeout on the TSI connection.

CLASSICTSI.ssl.disable

[true, false]

true

Whether to disable SSL for the TSI-UNICORE/X connection.

CLASSICTSI.statusupdate.grace

integer >= 1

2

How many times the XNJS will re-check job status in case of a lost job.

CLASSICTSI.statusupdate.interval

integer >= 1

10000

Interval (ms) for updating job statuses on the batch system.

8.2. Operation without a UNICORE TSI

In some situations (e.g. in a Windows-only environment) you will not use the UNICORE TSI, which is designed for multi-user Unix environments. The XNJS can run code in an "embedded" mode on the UNICORE/X machine. Note that this is without user switching, and inherently not secure as user code can access potentially sensitive information, such as configuration data. Also, there is no separation of users.

Embedded mode is always active when the "XNJS.tsiclass" property is not set, or set to its default value "de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.simple.LocalTS"

The embedded mode can be configured with a set of properties which are listed in the following table.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

XNJS.localtsi.jobLimit

integer number

0

Maximum number of concurrent jobs, if set to a value >0. Default is no limit.

XNJS.localtsi.shell

string

/bin/bash

Default UNIX shell to use (if shell is used).

XNJS.localtsi.useShell

[true, false]

true

Should a UNIX shell be used to execute jobs.

XNJS.localtsi.workerThreads

integer >= 1

4

Number of worker threads used to execute jobs.

8.3. Support for the UNICORE RUS Accounting

XNJS can produce accounting data and send it (using JMS messaging) to the UNICORE RUS Accounting which is a sophisticated and production ready system. The rus-job-processor module from this system is included in the Unicore/X release. Note that this system is supposed to work only when the classic (Perl) TSI is deployed.

Additionally to set up the whole UNICORE RUS Accounting, at least two additional components are needed to be installed (rus-service with a records database and rus-bssadapter that collects resource usage data from LRMS).

Further information on the RUS Accounting system is available in its documentation. Configuration of the rus-job-processor is available in this documentation too, in the respective section.

Other components of the RUS Accounting system can be downloaded from the UNICORE Life project, files section.

9. The IDB

The UNICORE IDB (incarnation database) contains information on how abstract job definitions are to be mapped onto real executables. This process (called "incarnation") is performed by the XNJS component. The second IDB function is advertising target system capabilities and allowing to check client resource requests against these.

The IDB is a (set of) XML files, which by default is called simpleidb.

For reference, the current XML schema for the IDB can be read from the SVN repository.

9.1. Defining the IDB file

The IDB file is defined by the property "XNJS.idbfile", which must point to a file on the UNICORE/X machine which is readable by the UNICORE/X process.

9.1.1. Using an IDB directory

While the IDB can be put into a single file, it is often convenient to use multiple files. In this case, the property "XNJS.idbfile" points to a directory. The information from all files in this directory is merged.

Note

When using a directory, you can specify a "main" IDB file containing applications, resources, properties etc. From other files, only Application and execution environment definitions will be read. A main IDB file is defined via "XNJS.idbfile.main"

9.1.2. User-specific applications (IDB extensions)

Sometimes it is required to define special applications for (groups of) users, and even let users define their own applications. This means that the set of available applications differs between users.

User specific applications can be defined using additional properties, for example like this:

 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.ext.1" value="/opt/staff/unicore/*.xml"/>
 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.ext.2" value="$HOME/.unicore/*.xml"/>
 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.ext.3" value="$WORK/projects/apps/*.xml"/>

These paths are resolved on the TSI machine, NOT on UNICORE/X. As you can see, they can contain variables. Make sure that the numbering is consistent (ext.1,ext.2,…).

Note

Some UNICORE features such as brokering in workflows might not (yet) work with user-specific applications!

9.1.3. Examples for IDB setup

Here are a few common IDB config examples

Single IDB file (default)

 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/simpleidb"/>

IDB directory, all files are merged

 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/idb/"/>

IDB directory, main file defined, read apps/execution environments from all files

 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/idb/"/>
 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.main" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/idb/simpleidb"/>

IDB directory, main file defined, user-specific extension

 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/idb/"/>
 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.main" value="/etc/unicore/unicorex/idb/simpleidb"/>
 <eng:Property name="XNJS.idbfile.ext.1" value="$HOME/.unicore/idb/*.xml"/>

9.2. Applications

The most important functionality of the IDB is providing executables for abstract applications. An abstract application is given by name and version, whereas an executable application is given in terms of executable, arguments and environment variables.

9.2.1. Simple applications

Here is an example entry for the "Date" application on a UNIX system

 <idb:IDBApplication xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
  <idb:ApplicationName>Date</idb:ApplicationName>
  <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
  <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
    <jsdl:Executable>/bin/date</jsdl:Executable>
  </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
 </idb:IDBApplication>

As can be seen, "Date" is simply mapped to "/bin/date".

9.2.2. Arguments

Command line arguments are specified using <Argument> tags:

 <idb:IDBApplication xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
  <idb:ApplicationName>LS</idb:ApplicationName>
  <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
  <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
    <jsdl:Executable>/bin/ls</jsdl:Executable>
    <jsdl:Argument>-l</jsdl:Argument>
    <jsdl:Argument>-t</jsdl:Argument>
  </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
 </idb:IDBApplication>

This would result in a command line "/bin/ls -l -t".

9.2.3. Conditional Arguments

The job submission from a client usually contains environment variables to be set when running the application. It often happens that a certain argument should only be included if a corresponding environment variable is set. This can be achieved by using "conditional arguments" in the incarnation definition. Conditional arguments are indicated by a quastion mark "?" appended to the argument value:

 <idb:IDBApplication>
  <idb:ApplicationName>java</idb:ApplicationName>
  <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.5.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
  <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
    <jsdl:Executable>/usr/bin/java</jsdl:Executable>
    <jsdl:Argument>-cp$CLASSPATH?</jsdl:Argument>
    <!-- other args omitted for clarity -->
  </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
 </idb:IDBApplication>

Here, <jsdl:Argument>-cp$CLASSPATH?</jsdl:Argument> is an optional argument.

If a job submission now includes a Environment variable named CLASSPATH

 <jsdl:Environment name="CLASSPATH">myjar.jar</jsdl:Environment>

the incarnated commandline will be "/usr/bin/java -cp$CLASSPATH …", otherwise just "/usr/bin/java …".

This allows very flexible incarnations.

9.2.4. More

For more details about IDB application definitions, please consult [ux_xnjs-idb-applications].

9.3. TargetSystemProperties

The TargetSystemProperties element contains information about a site’s available resources, as well as additional information that should be published to clients.

9.3.1. Textual information

Simple strings can be entered into the IDB which are then accessible client-side. This is very useful for conveying system-specifics to client code and also to users. These text-info strings are entered into the IDB as a subtag of the TargetSystemProperties tag

Here is an example

 <idb:TargetSystemProperties>

  <!-- text infos -->
  <idb:Info Name="Administator email">admin@site.org</idb:Info>

 </idb:TargetSystemProperties>

These pieces of information are accessible client side as part of the target system properties.

9.3.2. Resources

Resources of a target system are specified using the Resource tag defined in the JSDL specification (see http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.56.pdf). It allows to specify things like number of nodes, CPUtime (per CPU), CPUs per node, total number of CPUs, etc.

These capabilities are specified giving an exact value and a range, for example:

 <jsdl:Exact>3600</jsdl:Exact>
 <jsdl:Range>
  <jsdl:LowerBound>1</jsdl:LowerBound>
  <jsdl:UpperBound>86400</jsdl:UpperBound>
 </jsdl:Range>

The Range gives upper and lower bounds, where as the Exact value is interpreted as the DEFAULT, when the client does not request anything specific. If the Exact value is specified, the resource is part of the site’s default resource set.

There exist a number of standard settings. You may choose to not specify some of them, if they do not make sense on your system. For example, some sites do not allow the user to explicitely select nodes and processors per node, but only "total number of CPUs".

  • jsdl:IndividualCPUTime : The wall clock time.

  • jsdl:IndividualCPUCount : The number of CPUs per node

  • jsdl:IndividualPhysicalMemory : The amount of memory per node (in bytes)

  • jsdl:TotalResourceCount : The number of nodes.

  • jsdl:TotalCPUCount : The total number of CPUs.

9.3.3. "Total CPUs" vs. "Nodes and CPUs per node"

Users can specify the number of processors either as just "total number of CPUs", or they can give a value for both "nodes" and "CPUs per node". If both are given, the values containing more information (i.e. nodes + CPUs per node) are used.

Similarly, if the administrator specifies both possibilities with a default value in the IDB, the nodes + CPUs per node will have precedence.

9.3.4. CPU Architecture

JSDL allows to advertise the CPU architecture.

 <jsdl:CPUArchitecture>
  <jsdl:CPUArchitectureName>x86</jsdl:CPUArchitectureName>
 </jsdl:CPUArchitecture>

Due to restrictions imposed by the JSDL standard, the valid values for the CPUArchitectureName element are limited to a fixed list, some useful values are "x86", "x86_64", "sparc", "powerpc", and "other". For the full list please consult the JSDL standard.

9.3.5. Operating system

JSDL allows to advertise the operating system that the site runs.

 <!-- O/S -->
 <jsdl:OperatingSystem>
  <jsdl:OperatingSystemType>
     <jsdl:OperatingSystemName>LINUX</jsdl:OperatingSystemName>
  </jsdl:OperatingSystemType>
  <jsdl:OperatingSystemVersion>2.6.13</jsdl:OperatingSystemVersion>
  <jsdl:Description>Ubuntu Linux</jsdl:Description>
 </jsdl:OperatingSystem>

Due to restrictions imposed by the JSDL standard, the valid values for the OperatingSystemName element are limited to a fixed list, some useful values are "LINUX", "SOLARIS", "AIX", "MACOS", "WIN_NT", "WINDOWS_XP", "FREE_BSD" and "UNKNOWN". For the full list please consult the JSDL standard.

9.3.6. Other types of resources

Most HPC sites have special settings that cannot be mapped to the generic JSDL elements shown in the previous section. Therefore UNICORE includes a mechanism to allow sites to specify their own system settings and allow users to set these using the Grid middleware.

Custom resources are described in [xnjs-custom-resources].

9.3.7. File systems

File systems such as SCRATCH can be defined in the IDB as well, for example

 <idb:TargetSystemProperties>

  <!-- SCRATCH file system -->
  <idb:Filesystem Name="SCRATCH" IncarnatedPath="/work/$USER" />

 </idb:TargetSystemProperties>

The job’s environment will then contain a variable

SCRATCH="/work/$USER" ; export SCRATCH

JSDL data staging elements can contain the FileSystemName tag to indicate that the file should NOT be staged into the job working directory, but into the named file system.

9.3.8. Example Resources section

This example includes the elements defining capabilities, and some informational elements like CPUArchitecture and operating system info.

 <idb:TargetSystemProperties>
  <jsdl:Resources xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl">
   <jsdl:CPUArchitecture>
    <jsdl:CPUArchitectureName>x86</jsdl:CPUArchitectureName>
   </jsdl:CPUArchitecture>

   <!-- O/S -->
   <jsdl:OperatingSystem>
     <jsdl:OperatingSystemType>
       <jsdl:OperatingSystemName>LINUX</jsdl:OperatingSystemName>
     </jsdl:OperatingSystemType>
     <jsdl:OperatingSystemVersion>2.6.13</jsdl:OperatingSystemVersion>
     <jsdl:Description>A free UNIX clone</jsdl:Description>
    </jsdl:OperatingSystem>

    <!-- cpu time (per cpu) in seconds -->
    <jsdl:IndividualCPUTime>
      <jsdl:Exact>3600</jsdl:Exact>
      <jsdl:Range>
       <jsdl:LowerBound>1</jsdl:LowerBound>
       <jsdl:UpperBound>86400</jsdl:UpperBound>
      </jsdl:Range>
    </jsdl:IndividualCPUTime>

    <!-- Nodes -->
    <jsdl:TotalResourceCount>
      <jsdl:Exact>1.0</jsdl:Exact>
      <jsdl:Range>
       <jsdl:LowerBound>1.0</jsdl:LowerBound>
       <jsdl:UpperBound>16.0</jsdl:UpperBound>
       </jsdl:Range>
    </jsdl:TotalResourceCount>

    <!-- CPUs per node -->
    <jsdl:IndividualCPUCount>
      <jsdl:Exact>8.0</jsdl:Exact>
      <jsdl:Range>
       <jsdl:LowerBound>1.0</jsdl:LowerBound>
       <jsdl:UpperBound>8.0</jsdl:UpperBound>
      </jsdl:Range>
    </jsdl:IndividualCPUCount>

    <!-- total CPUs -->
    <jsdl:TotalCPUCount>
      <jsdl:Exact>8.0</jsdl:Exact>
      <jsdl:Range>
       <jsdl:LowerBound>1.0</jsdl:LowerBound>
       <jsdl:UpperBound>128.0</jsdl:UpperBound>
      </jsdl:Range>
    </jsdl:TotalCPUCount>

    <!-- Memory per node (bytes) -->
    <jsdl:IndividualPhysicalMemory>
      <jsdl:Exact>268435456</jsdl:Exact>
      <jsdl:Range>
       <jsdl:LowerBound>1024576</jsdl:LowerBound>
       <jsdl:UpperBound>1073741824</jsdl:UpperBound>
      </jsdl:Range>
    </jsdl:IndividualPhysicalMemory>

  </jsdl:Resources>
 </idb:TargetSystemProperties>

9.4. Script templates

If you need to modify the scripts that are generated by UNICORE/X and sent to the TSI, you can achieve this using two entries in the IDB.

<idb:IDB xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">

<!-- Templates -->
<idb:SubmitScriptTemplate><![CDATA[#!/bin/sh
#COMMAND
#RESOURCES
#SCRIPT
]]>
</idb:SubmitScriptTemplate>

<idb:ExecuteScriptTemplate><![CDATA[#!/bin/sh
#COMMAND
#RESOURCES
#SCRIPT
]]>
</idb:ExecuteScriptTemplate>

<!-- rest of IDB omitted -->

</idb:IDB>

The SubmitScriptTemplate is used for batch job submission, the ExecuteScriptTemplate is used for everything else (e.g. creating directories, resolving user’s home, etc)

UNICORE/X generates the TSI script as follows:

  • the "#COMMAND" entry will be replaced by the action for the TSI, e.g. "#TSI_SUBMIT".

  • the "#RESOURCES" will be replaced by the resource requirements, e.g. "#TSI_NODES=…"

  • the "#SCRIPT" is the user script

Modifying these templates can be used to perform special actions, such as loading modules, or changing the shell (but use something compatible to sh). For example, to add some special directory to the path for user scripts submitted in batch mode, you could use

<idb:IDB xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">

<!-- Templates -->
<idb:SubmitScriptTemplate><![CDATA[#!/bin/sh
#COMMAND
#RESOURCES
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/openmpi-2.1/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH=$PATH:/opt/openmpi-2.1/bin; export PATH
#SCRIPT
]]>
</idb:SubmitScriptTemplate>

<!-- rest of IDB omitted -->

</idb:IDB>
Note

Make sure that the commands added to the ExecuteScriptTGemplate DO NOT generate any output on standard out or standard error! Always redirect any output to /dev/null!

9.4.1. Properties

In the IDB file, XNJS properties can be specified, for example the command locations identified by property names starting with "CLASSICTSI."

<idb:IDB xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
<!--- rest of IDB omitted -->
 <idb:Property name="..."
               value="..."/>
 </idb:IDB

9.5. More on the IDB Application definitions

Simple application definitions and application arguments have already been covered in the previous section. Here, more details are presented.

9.5.1. Pre and post-commands

Sometimes it is useful to be able to execute one or several commands before or after the execution of an application. For example, to add directories to the path, or perform some pre-processing. The IDB allows to specify these using the PreCommand and PostCommand tags.

For example

  <idb:IDBApplication>
    <idb:ApplicationName>java</idb:ApplicationName>
    <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.5.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
    <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
      <jsdl:Executable>/usr/bin/java</jsdl:Executable>
      <jsdl:Argument>-cp$CLASSPATH?</jsdl:Argument>
      <!-- other args omitted for clarity -->
    </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
    <idb:PreCommand>PATH=$PATH:/opt/myapp/bin ; export PATH</idb:PreCommand>
    <idb:PreCommand>/opt/example/aquire_license</idb:PreCommand>
    <idb:PostCommand>/opt/example/release_license</idb:PostCommand>
   </idb:IDBApplication>

These commands will be executed as part of the user’s job script.

9.5.2. Interactive execution when using a batch system

If an application should not be submitted to the batch system, but be run on the login node (i.e. interactively), a flag in the IDB can be set:

  <idb:IDBApplication>
    <idb:ApplicationName>SomeApp</idb:ApplicationName>
    <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>

    <!-- instructs TSI to run the application interactively -->
    <idb:PreferInteractive>true</idb:PreferInteractive>

    <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
      <!-- other args omitted for clarity -->
    </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
   </idb:IDBApplication>
Note

This should only be used for very short-running tasks, since UNICORE cannot track the status of such a task. It is simply forked by the TSI, and UNICORE will just assume it is finished after a short while.

9.6. Application metadata (simple)

For client components it is very useful to have a description of an application in terms of its arguments. This allows for example the "Generic" GridBean in the UNICORE Rich client to automatically build a nice GUI for the application.

You can optionally attach metadata to an applications arguments.

  <jsdl:Argument Description="Verbose Execution"
                 Type="boolean"
                 Default="..."
                 ValidValues="true false"
                 DependsOn="..."
                 Excludes="..."
                 IsEnabled="false"
                 IsMandatory="false">+v$VERBOSE?</jsdl:Argument>

Some metadata is inferred automatically, such as the argument name (VERBOSE in the example above).

The meaning of the attributes should be fairly obvious.

  • the Description attribute contains a human-readable description of the argument

  • the Type attribute can have the values "string", "boolean", "int", "double", "filename" or "choice". In the case of "choice", the ValidValues attribute is used to specify the list of valid values. The type filename is used to specify that this is an input file for the application, allowing clients to enable special actions for this.

  • the Default attribute contains a default value.

  • The MimeType attribute allows to specify the mime-types of an input or output file as a comma-separated list. This can be used by smart clients, for example to check the viability of workflows.

  • The ValidValues attribute is used to limit the range of valid values, depending on the Type of the argument. The processing of this attribute is client-dependent. The UNICORE Rich Client supports intervals for the numeric types, and Java regular expressions for the string types.

  • DependsOn and Excludes are space-separated lists of argument names to control dependencies. For example, a "VERBOSE and a "QUIET" attribute should exclude each other.

  • IsMandatory (values: true or false) specifies if a parameter MUST be provided.

  • IsEnabled (values: true or false) is intended to tell clients that the parameter should initially be enabled in the GUI.

9.6.1. Application metadata (complex)

You can also add metadata as XML to the IDB entry, which allows you to add your custom metadata:

The XML metadata encompass argument metadata, similar to the "simple" metadata described above. Additionally you can define "Output" elements, which the "Generic" client UIs can process.

Custom metadata can be added in case an application requires it.

Here is a simple example.

  <idb:IDBApplication>
    <idb:ApplicationName>SomeApp</idb:ApplicationName>
    <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>

    <!-- metadata -->
    <u6:Metadata xmlns:u6="http://www.unicore.eu/unicore/jsdl-extensions">
      <!-- example argument-->
      <u6:Argument>
        <u6:Name>PRECISION</u6:Name>
        <u6:ArgumentMetadata>
          <u6:Type>choice</u6:Type>
          <u6:Description>Precision of the computation</u6:Description>
          <u6:ValidValue>Lax</u6:ValidValue>
          <u6:ValidValue>Reasonable</u6:ValidValue>
          <u6:ValidValue>Precise</u6:ValidValue>
          <u6:ValidValue>Pedantic</u6:ValidValue>
          <u6:IsMandatory>true</u6:IsMandatory>
        </u6:ArgumentMetadata>
      </u6:Argument>
      <!-- example Output element -->
      <u6:Output>
        <u6:Type>filename<u6:/Type>
      </u6:Output>
      <!-- any custom XML can be added as well -->
      <!-- ... -->
    </u6:Metadata>
   </idb:IDBApplication>

The XML supports the Type, Description, MimeType, IsMandatory, DependsOn, Excludes and ValidValue elements, with the same semantics as described above.

9.6.2. Per-application node requirements

When an application requires a special hardware or software which is available only on a subset of cluster nodes, node filtering must be applied. It is typically solved by marking the nodes with a special label, named node property. In application description, the required node properties might be added as follows:

  <idb:IDBApplication>
    <idb:ApplicationName>SOME_MPI_APP</idb:ApplicationName>
    <idb:ApplicationVersion>1.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
    <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
      <jsdl:Executable>/opt/some_mpi_app/binary</jsdl:Executable>
    </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
    <!-- other elements as pre/post commands -->
    <idb:BSSNodesFilter>infiniband</idb:BSSNodesFilter>
    <idb:BSSNodesFilter>gpu</idb:BSSNodesFilter>
   </idb:IDBApplication>

With such configuration the SOME_MPI_APP application will be executed only on nodes having both the infiniband and gpu properties.

Note

Nodes properties will not work with the Java TSI, and need not to be supported for all kinds of batch systems when using the legacy TSI. Please refer to the TSI documentation for details.

9.7. Execution Environments

Execution environments are an advanced feature that allows you to configure the way an executable is executed in a more detailed and user-friendly fashion. A common scenario is the configuration of an environment for parallel execution of a program, such as MPI.

A typical simple MPI invocation looks like this

/usr/local/bin/openmpi -np 4 ./my_mpi_program [my_program_arguments]

but of course there are many more possible arguments to the MPI command, which also depend on the local installation. By using a predefined execution environment, a UNICORE user need not know all the details, but can set up her job in a simple fashion.

This document covers the options that are available to configure execution environments in the IDB.

  • XML Schema for the execution environments: the current XML schema for the execution environment specification can be read from the SVN repository.

9.8. IDB definition of execution environments

The server-side setup of an execution environment is by adding an XML entry into the IDB. A simple environment might be used to run a user command using time. This example shows every possible option. You might want to consult the man page of time.

<idb:IDB xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">

<!-- sample execution environment definition in the IDB -->
  <ee:ExecutionEnvironment xmlns:ee="http://www.unicore.eu/unicore/jsdl-extensions">
    <ee:Name>TIME</ee:Name>
    <ee:Version>1.0</ee:Version>
    <ee:Description>Runs the user's command using the 'time' tool, measuring the used CPU time.</ee:Description>
    <ee:ExecutableName>/usr/bin/time</ee:ExecutableName>
    <ee:CommandlineTemplate>#EXECUTABLE #ARGS #USERCOMMAND #USERARGS</ee:CommandlineTemplate>
    <ee:Argument>
      <ee:Name>Output</ee:Name>
      <ee:IncarnatedValue>-o</ee:IncarnatedValue>
      <ee:ArgumentMetadata>
        <ee:Type>string</ee:Type>
        <ee:Description>Write the resource use statistics to a FILE instead of to the standard error stream</ee:Description>
      </ee:ArgumentMetadata>
    </ee:Argument>
    <ee:Option>
      <ee:Name>Verbose</ee:Name>
      <ee:IncarnatedValue>-v</ee:IncarnatedValue>
      <ee:OptionMetadata>
        <ee:Description>Enable verbose mode</ee:Description>
      </ee:OptionMetadata>
    </ee:Option>
    <ee:PreCommand runOnLoginNode="false">
      <ee:Name>PRINT_START_TIME</ee:Name>
      <ee:IncarnatedValue>echo "Started at $(date)"</ee:IncarnatedValue>
      <ee:OptionMetadata>
        <ee:Description>Explicitely print the start time</ee:Description>
      </ee:OptionMetadata>
    </ee:PreCommand>
    <ee:PostCommand runOnLoginNode="false">
      <ee:Name>PRINT_FINISH_TIME</ee:Name>
      <ee:IncarnatedValue>echo "Finished at $(date)"</ee:IncarnatedValue>
      <ee:OptionMetadata>
        <ee:Description>Explicitely print the finishing time</ee:Description>
      </ee:OptionMetadata>
    </ee:PostCommand>
   </ee:ExecutionEnvironment>

</idb:IDB>

If a client now submits a job including a request for the "TIME" execution environment (in the JSDL Resources element), UNICORE will generate a shell script that wraps the user command in the "time" invocation. Let’s say the job request includes the "Output" argument, the "Verbose" option and both precommand and postcommand:

  <!-- sample execution environment request sent from client to server -->
  <ee:ExecutionEnvironment xmlns:ee="http://www.unicore.eu/unicore/jsdl-extensions">
    <ee:Name>TIME</ee:Name>
    <ee:Version>1.0</ee:Version>
    <ee:Argument>
      <ee:Name>Output</ee:Name>
      <ee:Value>time_profile</ee:IncarnatedValue>
    </ee:Argument>
    <ee:Option>
      <ee:Name>Verbose</ee:Name>
    </ee:Option>
    <ee:PreCommand>
      <ee:Name>PRINT_START_TIME</ee:Name>
    </ee:PreCommand>
    <ee:PostCommand>
      <ee:Name>PRINT_FINISH_TIME</ee:Name>
     </ee:PostCommand>
   </ee:ExecutionEnvironment>

The script generated by UNICORE will look like this (leaving out some standard things):

#!/bin/bash

# ...

echo "Started at $(date)"
/usr/bin/time -o time_profile -v /path/to/my_user_application
echo "Finished at $(date)"

# ...

In the following the various XML tags that are available are explained in detail.

  • ExecutableName : This is the name of the executable that "defines" the environment.

  • CommandlineTemplate : To control the exact commandline that is created, this template is used.

The default template is

#EXECUTABLE #ARGS #USERCOMMAND #USERARGS

where

  • #EXECUTABLE is the executable defined using ExecutableName

  • #ARGS are the arguments and options for the executable

  • #USERCOMMAND is the user’s executable

  • #USERARGS are the arguments to the user’s executable

  • Argument : the Argument elements are used to create arguments to the executable. They have several subtags.

  • Name is the name of the argument.

  • IncarnatedValue is the argument as used in the commandline.

  • ArgumentMetadata are described below.

  • ArgumentMetadata : This element allows to describe an Argument in more detail. It has the following subtags

  • Type the argument type. Valid values are "string", "boolean", "int", "float" and "choice"

  • Description is a human-friendly description

  • Default a possible default value

  • ValidValue tags are used to denote possible values

  • DependsOn denotes other arguments that this argument requires

  • Excludes denotes other arguments that clash with this argument

  • PreCommand : This tag denotes a command that is executed immediately before the actual executable. Its subtags are the same as for Option. It has an additional attribute (with values "true" or "false") runOnLoginNode which controls whether the precommand is executed on the login node, or whether it is executed on the compute node (i.e. whether it is part of the job script sent to the TSI). By default, the precommand is executed on the login node.

  • PostCommand : This tag denotes a command that is executed after the actual execution. Its subtags are the same as for PreCommand.

9.9. Custom resource definitions

Most sites (especially in HPC) have special settings that cannot be mapped to the generic JSDL elements shown in the previous section. Therefore UNICORE includes a mechanism to allow sites to specify their own system settings and allow users to set these using the Grid middleware.

This requires two things

  • Custom resource definitions in the IDB

  • Customisation of the TSI Submit.pm module

If this mechanism is not flexible enough for your needs, consider looking at dynamic incarnation which is described in [xnjs-dynamicincarnation].

9.9.1. The IDB

You can insert <Resource> elements into the Resources section, an example follows.

 <jsdl:Resources>

    <idb:Resource xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
      <idb:Name>TasksPerNode</idb:Name>
      <idb:Type>int</idb:Type>
      <idb:Description>The number of tasks per node. If larger than 32, the node will run in SMT mode.</idb:Description>
      <idb:Min>1</idb:Min>
      <idb:Max>64</idb:Max>
      <idb:Default>32</idb:Default>
    </idb:Resource>

  </jsdl:Resources>

Apart from the numeric types <int> or <double>, there are the <string>, <choice> and <boolean> types. The <choice> allows you to specify a set of allowed values. This is useful for example to specify a selection of batch queues, or a selection of network topologies.

For example, defining queues could look like this:

 <jsdl:Resources>

    <idb:Resource xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
      <idb:Name>Queue</idb:Name>
      <idb:Type>choice</idb:Type>
      <idb:Description>The batch queue to use</idb:Description>
      <idb:Default>normal</idb:Default>
      <idb:AllowedValue>normal</idb:AllowedValue>
      <idb:AllowedValue>fast</idb:AllowedValue>
      <idb:AllowedValue>small</idb:AllowedValue>
      <idb:AllowedValue>development</idb:AllowedValue>
    </idb:Resource>

  </jsdl:Resources>

This example defines four available queues, with the "normal" one being used by default.

Note

The resource name "Queue" is recognized automatically by UNICORE and mapped to the correct TSI_QUEUE parameter when sending the job to the TSI.

Note

The resource name "Project" (i.e. the "TSI_PROJECT" TSI parameter) is mapped to the account parameter of the batch system, for example "-A" in the case of Torque. Note that JSDL has also a parameter allowing the user to set a job’s project. It will be also translated to the TSI_PROJECT parameter. The JSDL project is currently an independent feature to the resource-defined "Project" and if IDB defines ranges for the resource "Project", then the JSDL project is not checked against them. If both JSDL project and resource "Project" are received then the one defined as the resource takes the precedence.

9.9.2. Submitted JSDL

Clients can now send a special element in the JSDL job, for example requesting a certain value for the "TasksPerNode" setting:

    <jsdl:JobDescription>
  ...
        <jsdl:Resources>

          <jsdl-u:ResourceRequest xmlns:jsdl-u="http://www.unicore.eu/unicore/jsdl-extensions">
            <jsdl-u:Name>TasksPerNode</jsdl-u:Name>
            <jsdl-u:Value>64</jsdl-u:Value>
          </jsdl-u:ResourceRequest>

        </jsdl:Resources>
      </jsdl:JobDescription>

or for the queue example:

    <jsdl:JobDescription>
  ...
        <jsdl:Resources>

          <jsdl-u:ResourceRequest xmlns:jsdl-u="http://www.unicore.eu/unicore/jsdl-extensions">
            <jsdl-u:Name>Queue</jsdl-u:Name>
            <jsdl-u:Value>development</jsdl-u:Value>
          </jsdl-u:ResourceRequest>

        </jsdl:Resources>
      </jsdl:JobDescription>

9.9.3. TSI request

The UNICORE/X server will send the following snippet to the TSI:

#!/bin/sh
#TSI_SUBMIT
# ...
#TSI_SSR_TASKSPERNODE 64.0
# ....

As you can see, a special TSI command tag "#TSI_SSR_TASKSPERNODE" has been added. Now the remaining step is to have the TSI Submit.pm module has to parse this properly, and generate the correct batch system command.

Note that every name of a custom resource defined in IDB is converted to upper case and spaces are replaced with the underscore character "_".

9.10. Support for array jobs

Many resource managers support submission of job arrays, i.e. multiple similar jobs are submitted at the same time, where the user can control two things: how many jobs are submitted, and how many jobs run at the same time.

To enable this feature, the site administrator needs to define two resources in the IDB, named "ArraySize" and "ArrayLimit".

Consider the following example:

<!-- job array support -->
<idb:Resource xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
  <idb:Name>ArraySize</idb:Name>
  <idb:Type>int</idb:Type>
  <idb:Description>The number of job instances that are submitted as an array job.</idb:Description>
  <idb:Min>1</idb:Min>
  <idb:Max>100</idb:Max>
  <idb:Default>1</idb:Default>
</idb:Resource>

<idb:Resource xmlns:idb="http://www.fz-juelich.de/unicore/xnjs/idb">
  <idb:Name>ArrayLimit</idb:Name>
  <idb:Type>int</idb:Type>
  <idb:Description>The number of concurrent job instances of an array job.</idb:Description>
  <idb:Min>1</idb:Min>
  <idb:Max>100</idb:Max>
  <idb:Default>100</idb:Default>
</idb:Resource>

This requires TSI version 7.6 or later. Of course, earlier versions can be patched, too, since the mechanism is equivalent to other resources. The array size and limit are passed to the TSI via

#TSI_ARRAY 0-99
#TSI_ARRAY_LIMIT 10

The TSI also sets an environment variable in the job script that corresponds to the "task id", i.e. the ID of the current job instance:

UC_ARRAY_TASK_ID = "22"; export UC_ARRAY_TASK_ID

9.11. Tweaking the incarnation process

In UNICORE the term incarnation refers to the process of changing the abstract and probably universal grid request into a sequence of operations local to the target system. The most fundamental part of this process is creation of the execution script which is invoked on the target system (usually via a batch queuing subsystem (BSS)) along with an execution context which includes local user id, group, BSS specific resource limits.

UNICORE provides a flexible incarnation model - most of the magic is done automatically by TSI scripts basing on configuration which is read from the IDB. IDB covers script creation (using templates, abstract application names etc). Mapping of the grid user to the local user is done by using UNICORE Attribute Sources like XUUDB or UVOS.

In rare cases the standard UNICORE incarnation mechanism is not flexible enough. Typically this happens when the script which is sent to TSI should be tweaked in accordance to some runtime constraints. Few examples may include:

  • Administrator wants to set memory requirements for all invocations of the application X to 500MB if user requested lower amount of memory (as the administrator knows that the application consumes always at least this amount of memory).

  • Administrator wants to perform custom logging of suspected requests (which for instance exceed certain resource requirements threshold)

  • Administrator need to invoke a script that create a local user’s account if it doesn’t exist.

  • Administrator wants to reroute some requests to a specific BSS queue basing on the arbitrary contents of the request.

  • Administrator wants to set certain flags in the script which is sent to TSI when a request came from the member of a specific VO. Later those flags are consumed by TSI and are used as submission parameters.

Those and all similar actions can be performed with the Incarnation tweaking subsystem. Note that though it is an extremely powerful mechanism, it is also a very complicated one and configuring it is error prone. Therefore always try to use the standard UNICORE features (like configuration of IDB and attribute sources) in the first place. Treat this incarnation tweaking subsystem as the last resort!

To properly configure this mechanism at least a very basic Java programming language familiarity is required. Also remember that in case of any problems contacting the UNICORE support mailing list can be the solution.

9.11.1. Operation

It is possible to influence incarnation in two ways:

  • BEFORE-SCRIPT it is possible to change all UNICORE variables which are used to produce the final TSI script just before it is created and

  • AFTER-SCRIPT later on to change the whole TSI script.

The first BEFORE-SCRIPT option is suggested: it is much easier as you have to modify some properties only. In the latter much more error prone version you can produce an entirely new script or just change few lines of the script which was created automatically. It is also possible to use both solutions simultaneously.

Both approaches are configured in a very similar way by defining rules. Each rule has its condition which triggers it and list of actions which are invoked if the condition was evaluated to true. The condition is in both cases expressed in the same way. The difference is in case of actions. Actions for BEFORE-SCRIPT rules can modify the incarnation variables but do not return a value. Actions for AFTER-SCRIPT read as its input the original TSI script and must write out the updated version. Theoretically AFTER-SCRIPT actions can also modify the incarnation variables but this doesn’t make sense as those variables won’t be used.

9.11.2. Basic configuration

By default the subsystem is turned off. To enable it you must perform two simple things:

  • Add the XNJS.incarnationTweakerConfig property to the XNJS config file. The value of the property must provide a location of the file with dynamic incarnation rules.

  • Add some rules to the file configured above.

The following example shows how to set the configuration file to the value conf/incarnationTweaker.xml:

  ...
  <eng:Properties>
    ...
    <eng:Property name="XNJS.incarnationTweakerConfig" value="conf/incarnationTweaker.xml"/>
    ...
  </eng:Properties>
  ...

The contents of the rules configuration file must be created following this syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tns:incarnationTweaker xmlns:tns="http://eu.unicore/xnjs/incarnationTweaker"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

        <tns:beforeScript>
                <!-- Here come BEFORE-SCRIPT rules-->
        </tns:beforeScript>

        <tns:afterScript>
                <!-- And here AFTER-SCRIPT rules-->
        </tns:afterScript>
</tns:incarnationTweaker>

9.11.3. Creating rules

Each rule must conform to the following syntax:

        <tns:rule finishOnHit="false">
                <tns:condition> <!-- Here comes the rule's condition --> </tns:condition>

                <tns:action type="ACTION-TYPE">ACTION-DEFINITION</tns:action>
                <!-- More actions may follow -->
        </tns:rule>

The rule’s attribute finishOnHit is optional, by default its value is false. When it is present and set to true then this rule becomes the last rule invoked if it’s condition was met.

You can use as many actions as you want (assuming that at least one is present), actions are invoked in the order of appearance.

SpEL and Groovy

Rule conditions are always boolean expressions of the Spring Expression Language (SpEL). As SpEL can be also used in some types of actions it is the most fundamental tool to understand.

Actions can be also coded using the Groovy language. You can find Groovy documentation at Groovy’s web page: http://groovy.codehaus.org

Creating conditions

Rule conditions are always Spring Expression Language (SpEL) boolean expressions. To create SpEL expressions, the access to the request-related variables must be provided. All variables which are available for conditions are explained in [xnjs-dynamicincarnation-context].

Creating BEFORE-SCRIPT actions

There are the following action types which you can use:

  • spel (the default which is used when type parameter is not specified) treats action value as SpEL expression which is simply evaluated. This is useful for simple actions that should modify value of one variable.

  • script treats action value as a SpEL expression which is evaluated and which should return a string. Evaluation is done using SpEL templating feature with \${ and } used as variable delimiters (see section 7.5.13 in Spring documentation for details). The returned string is used as a command line which is invoked. This action is extremely useful if you want to run an external program with some arguments which are determined at runtime. Note that if you want to cite some values that may contain spaces (to treat them as a single program argument) you can put them between double quotes ". Also escaping characters with "\" works.

  • groovy treats action value as a Groovy script. The script is simply invoked and can manipulate the variables.

  • groovy-file works similarly to the groovy action but the Groovy script is read from the file given as the action value.

All actions have access to the same variables as conditions; see [xnjs-dynamicincarnation-context] for details.

Creating AFTER-SCRIPT actions

There are the following action types which you can use:

  • script (the default which is used when type parameter is not specified) treats action value as SpEL expression which is evaluated and which should return a string. Evaluation is done using SpEL templating feature with \${ and } used as variable delimiters (see section 7.5.13 in Spring documentation for details). The returned string used as a command line which is invoked. The invoked application gets as its standard input the automatically created TSI script and is supposed to return (using standard output) the updated script which shall be used instead. This action is extremely useful if you want to run an external program with some arguments which are determined at runtime. Note that if you want to cite some values that may contain spaces (to treat them as a single program argument) you can put them between double quotes ". Also escaping characters with \ works.

  • groovy treats action value as a Groovy script. The script has access to one special variable input of type Reader. The original TSI script is available from this reader. The groovy script is expected to print the updated TSI script which shall be used instead of the original one.

  • groovy-file works the same as the groovy action but the Groovy script is read from the file given as the action value.

All actions have access to the same variables as conditions; see [xnjs-dynamicincarnation] for details.

9.11.4. Final notes

  • The rules configuration file is automatically reread at runtime.

  • If errors are detected in the rules configuration file upon server startup then the whole subsystem is disabled. If errors are detected at runtime after an update then old version of rules is continued to be used. Always check the log file!

  • When rules are read the system tries to perform a dry run using an absolutely minimal execution context. This can detect some problems in your rules but mostly only in conditions. Actions connected to conditions which are not met won’t be invoked. Always try to submit a real request to trigger your new rules!

  • Be careful when writing conditions: it is possible to change incarnation variables inside your condition - such changes also influence incarnation.

  • It is possible (from the version 6.4.2 up) to stop the job processing from the rule’s action. To do so with the grovy or grovy-file action, throw the de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.ems.ExecutionException object from the script. In case of the script action, the script must exit with the exit status equal to 10. The first 1024 bytes of its standard error are used as the message which is included in the ExecutionException. This feature works both for the BEFORE- and AFTER- SCRIPT actions. It is not possible to achieve this with the spel action type.

9.11.5. Complete examples and hints

Invoking a logging script for users who have the specialOne role. Note that the script is invoked with two arguments (role name and client’s DN). As the latter argument may contain spaces we surround it with quotation marks.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tns:incarnationTweaker xmlns:tns="http://eu.unicore/xnjs/incarnationTweaker"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

        <tns:beforeScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>client.role.name == "specialOne"</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="script">/opt/scripts/logSpecials.sh ${client.role.name} "${client.distinguishedName}"</tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:beforeScript>

        <tns:afterScript>
        </tns:afterScript>
</tns:incarnationTweaker>

A more complex example. Let’s implement the following rules:

  • The Application with a IDB name HEAVY-APP will always get 500MB of memory requirement if user requested less or nothing.

  • All invocations of an executable /usr/bin/serial-app are made serial, i.e. the number of requested nodes and CPUs are set to 1.

  • For all requests a special script is called which can create a local account if needed along with appropriate groups.

  • There is also one AFTER-RULE. It invokes a groovy script which adds an additional line to the TSI script just after the first line. The line is added for all invocations of the /usr/bin/serial-app program.

The realization of the above logic can be written as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<tns:incarnationTweaker xmlns:tns="http://eu.unicore/xnjs/incarnationTweaker"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

        <tns:beforeScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>app.applicationName == "HEAVY-APP" and (resources.individualPhysicalMemory == null
                                          or resources.individualPhysicalMemory &lt; 500000000)</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action>resources.individualPhysicalMemory=500000000</tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>app.executable == "/usr/bin/serial-app" and resources.individualCPUCount != null</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action>resources.individualCPUCount=1</tns:action>
                        <tns:action>resources.totalResourceCount=1</tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>true</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="script">/opt/addUserIfNotExists.sh ${client.xlogin.userName} ${client.xlogin.encodedGroups}</tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:beforeScript>

        <tns:afterScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>app.executable == "/usr/bin/serial-app"</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="groovy">
int i=0;
input.eachLine() { line ->
if(i==1) {
     println("#TSI_MYFLAG=SERIAL");
     println(line);
} else
     println(line);

i++;
}
                        </tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:afterScript>
</tns:incarnationTweaker>

Remember that some characters are special in XML (e.g. < and &). You have to encode them with XML entities (e.g. as &lt; and &gt; respectively) or put the whole text in a CDATA section. A CDATA section starts with "<![CDATA[" and ends with "]]>". Example:

<tns:condition><!CDATA[ resources.individualPhysicalMemory < 500000000 ]]></tns:condition>

Note that usually it is better to put Groovy scripts in a separate file. Assuming that you placed the contents of the groovy AFTER-action above in a file called /opt/scripts/filter1.g then the following AFTER-SCRIPT section is equivalent to the above one:

        <tns:afterScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>app.executable == "/usr/bin/serial-app"</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="groovy-file">/opt/scripts/filter1.g</tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:afterScript>

It is possible to fail the job when a site-specific condition is met. E.g. with the groovy script:

        <tns:afterScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>SOME - CONDITION</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="groovy">
throw new de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.ems.ExecutionException(de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.util.ErrorCode.ERR_EXECUTABLE_FORBIDDEN, "Description for the user");
                        </tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:afterScript>

To check your rules when you develop them, it might be wise to enable DEBUG logging on incarnation tweaker facility. To do so add the following setting to the logging.properties file:

log4j.logger.unicore.xnjs.IncarnationTweaker=DEBUG

You may also want to see how the final TSI script looks like. Most often TSI places it in a file in job’s directory. However if the TSI you use doesn’t do so (e.g. in case of the NOBATCH TSI) you can trigger logging of the TSI script on the XNJS side. There are two ways to do it. You can enable DEBUG logging on the unicore.xnjs.tsi.TSIConnection facility:

log4j.logger.unicore.xnjs.tsi.TSIConnection=DEBUG

This solution is easy but it will produce also much more of additional information in you log file. If you want to log TSI scripts only, you can use AFTER-SCRIPT rule as follows:

        <tns:afterScript>
                <tns:rule>
                        <tns:condition>true</tns:condition>
                        <tns:action type="groovy">
org.apache.log4j.Logger log=org.apache.log4j.Logger.getLogger("unicore.xnjs.RequestLogging");
log.info("Dumping TSI request:");
input.eachLine() { line ->
     println(line);
     log.info("  " + line);
}
                        </tns:action>
                </tns:rule>
        </tns:afterScript>

The above rule logs all requests to the normal Unicore/X log file with the INFO level.

9.12. Incarnation tweaking context

Dynamic incarnation tweaker conditions and also all actions are provided with access to all relevant data structures which are available at XNJS during incarnation.

The following variables are present:

  • Client client provides access to authorization material: xlogin, roles, attributes etc. NOTE: In general it makes sense to modify only the xlogin field in the Client object, the rest are available only for information purposes. E.g. there is a queue field, but changing it in the incarnation tweaker rules will have no effect on incarnation. Use the queue property available from resources variable instead. You can read client’s queue to check what queue settings were defined in attribute sources for the user. The source

  • ApplicationInfo app provides access to information about application to be executed (both abstract IDB name and actual target system executable). You can change the values here to influence the incarnation. Remember that changing the user’s DN here won’t influence authorization layer as authorization was already done for each request at this stage. The source

  • ResourcesWrapper resources provides access to resource requirements of the application. The source

  • ExecutionContext ec provides access to the application environment: interactive setting, environment variables, working directory and stdin/out/err files. The source

  • IncarnatedExecutionEnvironment execEnv provides access to the template which is used to produce the final script. In most cases only manipulating pre- and post- commands makes sense. The source

  • IncarnationDataBase idb provides an (read only) access to the contents of the IDB. The source

Each of the available variables has many properties that you can access. It is best to check source code of the class to get a complete list of them. You can read property X if it has a corresponding Java public Type getX() method. You can set a property Y if it has a corresponding Java public void setY(Type value) method.

9.12.1. Simple example

Let’s consider the variable client. In the Client class you can find methods:

public String getDistinguishedName()

public void setDistinguishedName(String distinguishedName)

This means that the following SpEL condition is correct:

client.distinguishedName != null and client.distinguishedName == "CN=Roger Zelazny,C=US"

Note that it is always a safe bet to check first if the value of a property is not null.

Moreover you can also set the value of the distinguished name in an action (this example is correct for both SpEL and Groovy):

client.distinguishedName="CN=Roger Zelazny,C=US"

9.12.2. Advanced example

Often the interesting property is not available directly under one of the above enumerated variables. In case of the client variable one example may be the xlogin property holding the list of available local accounts and groups and the ones which were selected among them.

Example of condition checking the local user id:

client.xlogin.userName != null and client.xlogin.userName == "roger"

Setting can also be done in an analogous way. However always pay attention to the fact that not always setting a value will succeed. E.g. for Xlogin it is possible to set a selected xlogin only to one of those defined as available (see contents if the respective setSelectedLogin() method). Therefore to change local login to a fixed value it is best to just override the whole XLogin object like this (SpEL):

client.xlogin=new eu.unicore.security.Xlogin(new String[] {"roger"}, new String{"users"})

9.12.3. Resources variable

As it is bit difficult to manipulate the resources requirements object which is natively used by UNICORE, it is wrapped to provide an easier to use interface. The only exposed properties are those requirements which are actually used by UNICORE when the TSI script is created.

You can access the low level (and complicated) original resources object through the resources.allResources property.

10. Data staging

When executing user jobs, the XNJS also performs data staging, i.e. getting data from remote locations before starting the job, and uploading data when the job has finished. A variety of protocols can be used for data movement, including UNICORE-specific protocols such as BFT or UFTP, but also standard protocols like ftp, scp, and e-mail.

Some of these (like mail) have additional configuration options, which are given in this section.

10.1. SCP support

UNICORE supports file staging in/out using SCP, as defined in the Open Grid Forum’s "HPC File staging profile" (GFD.135).

In the JSDL job description, an scp stage in is specified as follows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<p:JobDefinition xmlns:p="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl"
                 xmlns:jsdl-posix="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
  <p:JobDescription>
    <p:Application>
      <jsdl-posix:POSIXApplication>
        <jsdl-posix:Executable>/bin/ls</jsdl-posix:Executable>
        <jsdl-posix:Argument>-l</jsdl-posix:Argument>
      </jsdl-posix:POSIXApplication>
    </p:Application>
    <p:DataStaging>
      <p:FileName>input</p:FileName>
      <p:CreationFlag>overwrite</p:CreationFlag>
      <p:Source>
        <p:URI>scp://HOST:PORT:filepath</p:URI>
      </p:Source>
      <ac:Credential xmlns:ac="http://schemas.ogf.org/hpcp/2007/11/ac">
        <wsse:UsernameToken xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd">
          <wsse:Username>***</wsse:Username>
          <wsse:Password>***</wsse:Password>
        </wsse:UsernameToken>
      </ac:Credential>
    </p:DataStaging>
  </p:JobDescription>
</p:JobDefinition>

As you can see, username and password required to invoke SCP are embedded into the job description, and the URL schema is "scp://"

Site setup

At a site that wishes to support SCP, the UNICORE server needs to be configured with the path of an scp wrapper script that can pass the password to scp, if necessary.

If not already pre-configured during installation, you can configure this path manually in the XNJS config file (or simpler in the IDB)

    <!-- scp wrapper script -->
    <eng:Property name="XNJS.staging.scpWrapper" value="/path/to/scp-wrapper.sh"/>
SCP wrapper script

The TSI 6.4.2 and later includes a script written in Perl (scp-wrapper.pl), depending on how you installed UNICORE it is probably already pre-configured for you.

An alternative scp wrapper script written in TCL is provided in the "extras" folder of the core server bundle, for your convenience it is reproduced here. It requires TCL and Expect. You may need to modify the first line depending on how Expect is installed on your system.

#!/usr/bin/expect -f

# this is a wrapper around scp
#
# it automates the interaction required to enter the password.
#
# Prerequisites:
# The TCL Expect tool is used.
#
# Arguments:
# 1: source, 2: target, 3: password

set source [lindex $argv 0]
set target [lindex $argv 1]
set password [lindex $argv 2]
set timeout 10

# start the scp process
spawn scp "$source" "$target"

# handle the interaction
expect {
   "passphrase" {
     send "$password\r"
     exp_continue
    } "password:" {
     send "$password\r"
     exp_continue
    } "yes/no)?" {
     send "yes\r"
     exp_continue
    } timeout {
      puts "Timeout."
      exit
    } -re "." {
      exp_continue
    } eof {
      exit
    }
}

Similar scripts may also be written in other scripting languages such as Perl or Python.

10.2. Mail support

UNICORE supports file staging out using email. An existing SMPT server or some other working email mechanism is required for this to work.

In the JSDL job description, a stage out using email is specified as follows:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<p:JobDefinition xmlns:p="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl"
                 xmlns:jsdl-posix="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
  <p:JobDescription>

    <!-- example stage-out using email -->
    <p:DataStaging>
      <p:FileName>stdout</p:FileName>
      <p:Target>
        <p:URI>mailto:user@domain?subject=Your output is ready</p:URI>
      </p:Target>
    </p:DataStaging>

  </p:JobDescription>
</p:JobDefinition>

The "mailto" URI consists of the email address and an OPTIONAL user-defined subject.

Site setup

Without any configuration, UNICORE will use JavaMail and attempt to use an SMTP server running on the UNICORE/X host, expected to be listening on port 25 (the default SMTP port).

To change this behaviour, the following properties can be defined (in the IDB or XNJS config file). See the next section if you do not want to use an SMTP server directly.

  • XNJS.staging.mailHost: the host of the SMTP server

  • XNJS.staging.mailPort : the port of the SMTP server

  • XNJS.staging.mailUser : the user name of the mail account which sends email

  • XNJS.staging.mailPassword : the password of the mail account which sends email

  • XNJS.staging.mailSSL : to use SSL, see the XNJS/TSI SSL setup page on how to setup SSL

Email wrapper script

As an alternative to using JavaMail, the site admin can define a script which is executed (as the current grid user) to send email.

    <!-- mailto wrapper script, defining this will disable JavaMail -->
    <eng:Property name="XNJS.staging.mailSendScript" value="/path/to/mail-wrapper.sh"/>

This is expected to takes three parameters: email address, file to send and a subject. An example invocation is

mail-wrapper.sh "user@somehost.eu" "outfile" "Result file from your job"

10.3. GridFTP

Using GridFTP requires a proxy cert, please refer to section [ux_proxies]

10.4. Configuration reference

The configuration settings related to data staging are summarized in the following table.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

XNJS.staging.curl

string

-

Location of the curl executable used for FTP stage-ins. If null, Java code will be used for HTTP.

XNJS.staging.filesystemGraceTime

integer >= 1

10

Grace time (in seconds) when waiting for files to appear on shared filesystems.

XNJS.staging.gridftp

string

globus-url-copy

Location of the globus-url-copy executable used for GridFTP staging.

XNJS.staging.gridftpParameters

string

empty string

Additional options for globus-url-copy.

XNJS.staging.mailEnableSSL

[true, false]

false

Outgoing mail (SMTP): enable SSL connection.

XNJS.staging.mailHost

string

localhost

Outgoing mail host (SMTP) used for staging-out via email.

XNJS.staging.mailPassword

string

-

Outgoing mail (SMTP) password.

XNJS.staging.mailPort

integer number

25

Outgoing mail (SMTP) port number.

XNJS.staging.mailSendScript

string

-

Script to be used for sending outgoing mail (instead of using SMTP).

XNJS.staging.mailUser

string

-

Outgoing mail (SMTP) user name.

XNJS.staging.scpWrapper

string

scp-wrapper.sh

Location of the wrapper script used for scp staging.

XNJS.staging.wget

string

-

Location of the wget executable used for HTTP stage-ins. If null, Java code will be used for HTTP.

XNJS.staging.wgetParameters

string

-

Additional options for wget.

11. UFTP setup

UFTP is a high-performance file transfer protocol. For using UFTP as a data staging and file upload/download solution in UNICORE, a separate server (uftpd) is required. This is installed on a host with direct access to the file system, usually this is a cluster login node, but it can also be a separate host.

In a UFTP transfer, one side acts as a client and the other side is the uftpd server. UNICORE/X will run the client code via the TSI (recommended) or in-process (losing performance)

For details on how to install the uftpd server please refer to the separate UFTPD manual available on unicore.eu, which provides all information required to install and configure the UFTPD.

Note

If UFTPD is not running on the same host(s) as the TSI, you will need to copy the UTFPD libs and client executable to the TSI machine(s).

The minimal required UNICORE/X configuration consists of the listen and command addresses of the UFTPD server and the location of the client executable on the TSI host.

# Listener (pseudo-FTP) socket of UFTPD
coreServices.uftp.server.host=uftp.yoursite.edu
coreServices.uftp.server.port=64434

# Command socket of UFTPD
coreServices.uftp.command.host=uftp.yoursite.edu
coreServices.uftp.command.port=64435

# Full path to the 'uftp.sh' client executable
# installed on the TSI node
coreServices.uftp.client.executable=/usr/share/unicore/uftpd/bin/uftp.sh

If you want to run the client code in the UNICORE/X process, set

coreServices.uftp.client.local=true

The following table shows all the available configuration options for UFTP.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

coreServices.uftp.buffersize

integer >= 1

128

File read/write buffer size in kbytes.

coreServices.uftp.client.executable

string

uftp.sh

Configures the path to the client executable (location of uftp.sh).

coreServices.uftp.client.host

string

not set

Client host. If not set and UFTP client is set to local, then the local interface address will be determined at runtime. If not set and non-local mode is configured, then the TSI machine will be used.

coreServices.uftp.client.ip_addresses

string

not set

Client IP address(es) to send to UFTPD. If not set, the client.host value will be used.

coreServices.uftp.client.local

[true, false]

false

Controls whether, the Java UFTP client code should be run directly within the JVM, which will work only if the UNICORE/X has access to the target file system, or, if set to false, in the TSI.

coreServices.uftp.command.host

string

localhost

The UFTPD command host.

coreServices.uftp.command.port

integer [1 — 65535]

64435

The UFTPD command port.

coreServices.uftp.command.socketTimeout

integer [0 — 300]

10

The timeout (in seconds) for communicating with the command port.

coreServices.uftp.command.sslDisable

[true, false]

false

Allows to disable SSL on the command port (useful for testing).

coreServices.uftp.disableSessionMode

[true, false]

false

Controls multi-file transfers should be done one by one (NOT recommended).

coreServices.uftp.encryption

[true, false]

false

Controls whether encryption should be enabled by default for server-server transfers.

coreServices.uftp.rateLimit

integer number

0

Limit the bandwidth (bytes per second) used by a single transfer (0 means no limit).

coreServices.uftp.server.host

string

-

UFTPD listen host. If this is not set, UFTP is disabled.

coreServices.uftp.server.port

integer [1 — 65535]

64434

UFTPD listen port.

coreServices.uftp.streams

integer number

1

Requested number of parallel data streams.

coreServices.uftp.streamsLimit

integer >= 1

4

Server limit for number of streams (per client connection).

12. Configuration of storages

A UNICORE/X server can make storage systems (e.g. file systems) accessible to users in three ways.

  • storages can be "attached" to compute services;

  • "shared" storages can be defined, these are available even if there is no compute service;

  • the "StorageFactory" service allows users to create dynamic storage instances, which is very useful if the UNICORE workflow system is used;

  • each job has a working directory (sometimes called "USpace"), which is exposed as a storage instance and can be freely accessed using a UNICORE client.

Storages have additional features which are covered in other sections of this manual.

12.1. Configuring storages attached to TargetSystem instances

Each TargetSystem instance can have one or more storages attached to it. Note that this is different case from the shared storage (the one created with CreateSMSOnStartup hook) which is not attached to any particular TargetSystem. The practical difference is that to use storages attached to a TargetSystem, a user must first create one.

By default, NO storages are created.

For example, to allows users access their home directory on the target system, you need to add a storage. This is done using configuration entries in uas.config.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.allowUserDefinedPath

[true, false]

true

Whether the allow the user to set the storage base directory when creating the storage via the StorageFactory.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.checkExistence

[true, false]

true

Whether the existence of the base directory should be checked when creating the storage.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.class

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.StorageManagement

-

Storage implementation class used (and mandatory) in case of the CUSTOM type.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.cleanup

[true, false]

false

Whether files of the storage should be removed when the storage is destroyed. This is mostly useful for storage factories. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.defaultUmask

integer number

77

Default (initial) umask for files in the storage. Must be an octal number. Note that this property is not updateable at runtime for normal storages as it wouldn’t have sense (it is the initial umask by definition). However in case of storage factory it is, i.e. after the property change, the SMSes created by the factory will use the new umask as the initial one. At runtime the SMS umask can be changed by the clients (if are authorized to do so).

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.description

string

Filesystem

Description of the storage. It will be presented to the users. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.disableMetadata

[true, false]

false

Whether the metadata service should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.disableTrigger

[true, false]

false

Whether the triggering feature should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.filterFiles

[true, false]

false

If set to true then this SMS will filter returned files in response of the ListDirectory command: only files owned or accessible by the caller will be returned. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.infoProviderClass

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.StorageInfoProvider

de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.DefaultStorageInfoProvider

(Very) advanced setting, providing information about storages produced by the SMS factory.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.name

string

-

Storage name. If not set then the identifier is used.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.path

string

-

Denotes a storage base path or the name of an environment variable in case of the VARIABLE type.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.protocols

string

-

(DEPRECATED) Which protocols to enable, default is defined by the global container setting. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.settings.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Useful for CUSTOM storage types: allows to set additional settings (if needed) by such storages. Please refer to documentation of a particular custom storage type for details. Note that while in general updates of the properties at runtime are propagated to the chosen implementation, it is up to it to use the updated values or ignore changes. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.triggerUserID

string

-

For data triggering on shared storages, use this user ID for the controlling process.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.type

[HOME, FIXEDPATH, CUSTOM, VARIABLE]

FIXEDPATH

Storage type. FIXEDPATH: mapped to a fixed directory, VARIABLE: resolved using an environmental variable lookup, CUSTOM: specified class is used.

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.N.workdir

string

-

(DEPRECATED, use path instead)

Here, "N" stands for an identifier (e.g. 1,2, 3, …) to distinguish the storages. For example, to configure three storages (Home, one named TEMP pointing to "/tmp" and the other named DEISA_HOME pointing to "$DEISA_HOME") you would add the following configuration entries in uas.config:

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.0.name=Home
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.0.type=HOME

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.1.name=TEMP
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.1.type=FIXEDPATH
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.1.path=/tmp
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.1.protocols=UFTP BFT

coreServices.targetsystem.storage.2.name=DEISA_HOME
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.2.type=VARIABLE
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.2.path=$DEISA_HOMES

# example for a custom SMS implementation (e.g. for Hadoop or iRODS)
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.3.name=IRODS
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.3.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.3.path=/
coreServices.targetsystem.storage.3.class=my.custom.sms.ImplementationClass

Note that you can optionally control the file transfer protocols that should be enabled for each storage.

Some storage protocols require additional software to be installed. For instance, the UNICORE File Transfer Protocol (UFTP) requires the UFTPD to be available and configured on the system.

12.1.1. Controlling target system’s storage resources

By default storage resource names (used in storage address) are formed from the owning user’s xlogin and the storage type name, e.g. "someuser-Home". This is quite useful as users can write a URL of the storage without prior searching for its address. However if the site’s user mapping configuration maps more than one grid certificate to the same xlogin, then this solution is not acceptable: only the first user connecting would be able to access her/his storage. This is because resource owners are expressed as grid user names (certificate DNs) and not xlogins. To have unique, but dynamically created and non user friendly names of storages (and solve the problem of non-unique DN mappings) set this option in uas.config:

coreServices.targetsystem.uniqueStorageIds=true

12.2. Configuring shared storage services

Shared storages are created on server startup and published in the registry. They are independent of any compute services and accessible for all users.

Note

Service accessibility does not imply file system accessibility. The file system access control is still in place, so users must have the appropriate Unix permissions to access a storage.

The basic property controls which storages are enabled

coreServices.sms.share.enabledShares=WORK SHARE2 ...

Each enabled storage is configured using a set of properties, which is the same as for the other storage types, except for the prefix.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

coreServices.sms.share.N.allowUserDefinedPath

[true, false]

true

Whether the allow the user to set the storage base directory when creating the storage via the StorageFactory.

coreServices.sms.share.N.checkExistence

[true, false]

true

Whether the existence of the base directory should be checked when creating the storage.

coreServices.sms.share.N.class

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.StorageManagement

-

Storage implementation class used (and mandatory) in case of the CUSTOM type.

coreServices.sms.share.N.cleanup

[true, false]

false

Whether files of the storage should be removed when the storage is destroyed. This is mostly useful for storage factories. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.share.N.defaultUmask

integer number

77

Default (initial) umask for files in the storage. Must be an octal number. Note that this property is not updateable at runtime for normal storages as it wouldn’t have sense (it is the initial umask by definition). However in case of storage factory it is, i.e. after the property change, the SMSes created by the factory will use the new umask as the initial one. At runtime the SMS umask can be changed by the clients (if are authorized to do so).

coreServices.sms.share.N.description

string

Filesystem

Description of the storage. It will be presented to the users. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.share.N.disableMetadata

[true, false]

false

Whether the metadata service should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.sms.share.N.disableTrigger

[true, false]

false

Whether the triggering feature should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.sms.share.N.filterFiles

[true, false]

false

If set to true then this SMS will filter returned files in response of the ListDirectory command: only files owned or accessible by the caller will be returned. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.share.N.infoProviderClass

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.StorageInfoProvider

de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.DefaultStorageInfoProvider

(Very) advanced setting, providing information about storages produced by the SMS factory.

coreServices.sms.share.N.name

string

-

Storage name. If not set then the identifier is used.

coreServices.sms.share.N.path

string

-

Denotes a storage base path or the name of an environment variable in case of the VARIABLE type.

coreServices.sms.share.N.protocols

string

-

(DEPRECATED) Which protocols to enable, default is defined by the global container setting. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.share.N.settings.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Useful for CUSTOM storage types: allows to set additional settings (if needed) by such storages. Please refer to documentation of a particular custom storage type for details. Note that while in general updates of the properties at runtime are propagated to the chosen implementation, it is up to it to use the updated values or ignore changes. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.share.N.triggerUserID

string

-

For data triggering on shared storages, use this user ID for the controlling process.

coreServices.sms.share.N.type

[HOME, FIXEDPATH, CUSTOM, VARIABLE]

FIXEDPATH

Storage type. FIXEDPATH: mapped to a fixed directory, VARIABLE: resolved using an environmental variable lookup, CUSTOM: specified class is used.

coreServices.sms.share.N.workdir

string

-

(DEPRECATED, use path instead)

For example

coreServices.sms.share.WORK.name=WORK
coreServices.sms.share.WORK.description=Shared projects workspace
coreServices.sms.share.WORK.path=/mnt/gpfs/projects
coreServices.sms.share.WORK.defaultUmask=07
coreServices.sms.share.WORK.protocols=UFTP BFT

The ID parameter will be used as the storage’s service ID. This means that the URL to access the storage will be something like

https://host:port/services/StorageManagement?res=WORK

Usually, the "name" property is not needed, if you set it it should match the ID to avoid confusion.

The other storage properties (see the previous section) are also accepted!

12.3. Configuring the StorageFactory service

The StorageFactory service allows clients to dynamically create storage instances. These can have different types, for example you could have storages on a normal filesystem, and other storages on an Apache Hadoop cluster.

The basic property controls which storage types are supported

coreServices.sms.enabledFactories=TYPE1 TYPE2 ...

Each supported storage type is configured using a set of properties

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

coreServices.sms.factory.N.allowUserDefinedPath

[true, false]

true

Whether the allow the user to set the storage base directory when creating the storage via the StorageFactory.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.checkExistence

[true, false]

true

Whether the existence of the base directory should be checked when creating the storage.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.class

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.StorageManagement

-

Storage implementation class used (and mandatory) in case of the CUSTOM type.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.cleanup

[true, false]

false

Whether files of the storage should be removed when the storage is destroyed. This is mostly useful for storage factories. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.factory.N.defaultUmask

integer number

77

Default (initial) umask for files in the storage. Must be an octal number. Note that this property is not updateable at runtime for normal storages as it wouldn’t have sense (it is the initial umask by definition). However in case of storage factory it is, i.e. after the property change, the SMSes created by the factory will use the new umask as the initial one. At runtime the SMS umask can be changed by the clients (if are authorized to do so).

coreServices.sms.factory.N.description

string

Filesystem

Description of the storage. It will be presented to the users. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.factory.N.disableMetadata

[true, false]

false

Whether the metadata service should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.disableTrigger

[true, false]

false

Whether the triggering feature should be disabled for this storage.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.filterFiles

[true, false]

false

If set to true then this SMS will filter returned files in response of the ListDirectory command: only files owned or accessible by the caller will be returned. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.factory.N.infoProviderClass

Class extending de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.StorageInfoProvider

de.fzj.unicore.uas.impl.sms.DefaultStorageInfoProvider

(Very) advanced setting, providing information about storages produced by the SMS factory.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.name

string

-

Storage name. If not set then the identifier is used.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.path

string

-

Denotes a storage base path or the name of an environment variable in case of the VARIABLE type.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.protocols

string

-

(DEPRECATED) Which protocols to enable, default is defined by the global container setting. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.factory.N.settings.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Useful for CUSTOM storage types: allows to set additional settings (if needed) by such storages. Please refer to documentation of a particular custom storage type for details. Note that while in general updates of the properties at runtime are propagated to the chosen implementation, it is up to it to use the updated values or ignore changes. (runtime updateable)

coreServices.sms.factory.N.triggerUserID

string

-

For data triggering on shared storages, use this user ID for the controlling process.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.type

[HOME, FIXEDPATH, CUSTOM, VARIABLE]

FIXEDPATH

Storage type. FIXEDPATH: mapped to a fixed directory, VARIABLE: resolved using an environmental variable lookup, CUSTOM: specified class is used.

coreServices.sms.factory.N.workdir

string

-

(DEPRECATED, use path instead)

For example

coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.description=GPFS file system
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.fixedpath=GPFS file system
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.path=/mnt/gpfs/unicore/unicorex-1/storage-factory
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.protocols=UFTP BFT

# if this is set to true, the directory corresponding to a storage instance will
# be deleted when the instance is destroyed. Defaults to "true"
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.cleanup=true

# allow the user to pass in a path on storage creation. Defaults to "true"
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.allowUserDefinedPath=true

The "path" parameter determines the base directory used for the storage instances (i.e. on the backend), and the unique ID of the storage will be appended automatically.

The "cleanup" parameter controls whether the storage directory will be deleted when the storage is destroyed.

It is also possible to let the user control the path of the dynamic storage, by sending a "path" parameter when creating the storage. For example, the user can use UCC to create a storage:

$> ucc create-sms path=/opt/projects/shared-data

This will create a storage resource for accessing the given directory. In this case, there will be no cleanup, and no appended storage ID.

The normal storage properties (see the previous section) are also accepted: "protocols", "type", "class", "filterFiles" etc.

If you have a custom storage type, an additional "class" parameter defines the Java class name to use (as in normal SMS case). For example:

coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.sms.factory.TYPE1.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.SMSHadoopImpl

12.4. Configuring the job working directory storage services

For each UNICORE job instance, a storage instance is created, corresponding to the job’s working directory. In some cases you might wish to control this storage in detail, e.g. define the supported protocol, or configure a special storage backend like Apache Hadoop HDFS.

The Uspace storages are configured using a set of properties, which is the same as for the other storage types, except for the prefix.

Note

The "path", "name", "description" and "umask" properties are ignored, they are set by the server.

For example

coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.SMSHadoopImpl
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.disableTrigger=true
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.disableMetadata=true
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.protocols=BFT RBYTEIO

13. The UNICORE metadata service

UNICORE supports metadata management on a per-storage basis. This means, each storage instance (for example, the user’s home, or a job working directory) has its own metadata management service instance.

Metadata management is separated into two parts: a front end (which is a web service) and a back end.

The front end service allows the user to manipulate and query metadata, as well as manually trigger the metadata extraction process. The back end is the actual implementation of the metadata management, which is pluggable and can be exchanged by custom implementations. The default implementation has the following properties

  • Apache Lucene for indexing,

  • Apache Tika for extracting metadata,

  • metadata is stored as files directly on the storage resource, in files with a special ".metadata" suffix

  • the index files are stored on the UNICORE/X server, in a configurable directory

13.1. Enabling the metadata service

First, UNICORE’s service configuration file <CONF>/wsrflite.xml needs to be edited and the following service definition added in the <services> section:

 <!-- enable the metadata management service -->
 <service name="MetadataManagement" wsrf="true" persistent="true">
  <interface class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.MetadataManagement"/>
  <implementation class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.metadata.MetadataManagementHomeImpl"/>
 </service>

You will also need to define which implementation should be used. This is done via properties, which can be defined either in <CONF>/wsrflite.xml or <CONF>/uas.config.

In uas.config, set:

#
# Metadata manager settings
#

coreServices.metadata.managerClass=eu.unicore.uas.metadata.LuceneMetadataManager

#
# use Tika for extracting metadata
# (if you do not want this, remove this property)
#
coreServices.metadata.parserClass=org.apache.tika.parser.AutoDetectParser

#
# Lucene index directory:
#
# Configure a directory on the UNICORE/X machine where index
# files should be placed
#
coreServices.metadata.luceneDirectory=/tmp/data/luceneIndexFiles/

13.2. Controlling metadata extraction

If a file named .unicore_metadata_control is found in the base directory (i.e. where the crawler starts its crawling process), it is evaluated to decide which files should be included or excluded in the metadata extraction process.

By default, all files are included in the extraction process, except those matching a fixed set of patterns (".svn", and the UNICORE metadata and control files themselves).

The file format is a standard "key=value" properties file. Currently, the following keys are understood

  • exclude a comma-separated list of string patterns of filenames to exclude

  • include a comma-separated list of string patterns of filenames to include

  • useDefaultExcludes if set to "false", the predefined exclude list will NOT be used

The include/exclude patterns may include wildcards ? and *.

Examples:

To only include pdf and jpg files, you would use

include=*.pdf,*.jpg

To exclude all doc and ppt files,

exclude=*.doc,*.ppt

To include all pdf files except those whose name starts with 2011,

include=*.pdf
exclude=2011*.pdf

14. Data-triggered processing

UNICORE can be set up to automatically scan storages and trigger processing steps (e.g. submit batch jobs or run processing tasks) according to user-defined rules.

14.1. Enabling and disabling data-triggered processing

By default, data-triggered processing is enabled on all storages except job working directories.

Explicit control is available via the configuration properties for storages, as listed in [ux_storages] Set the disableTrigger property to "true" to disable the data-triggered processing for the given storage.

14.2. Controlling the scanning process

To control which directories should be scanned, a file named .UNICORE_Rules at the top-level of the storage is read and evaluated. This file can be (and usually will be) edited and uploaded by the user.

The file must be in JSON format, and has the following elements:

{
"DirectoryScan": {

  "IncludeDirs": [
      "project.*",
  ],
  "ExcludeDirs": [
      "project42",
  ],
  "Interval": "30",

},

"Rules": [ ]

}

The "IncludeDirs" and "ExcludeDirs" are lists of Java regular expression strings that denote directories (as always relative to the storage root) that should be included or excluded from the scan.

The "Rules" section controls which files are to be processed, and what is to be done (actions). This is described below.

14.3. Special case: shared storages

Since shared storages are "owned" by the UNICORE server and used by multiple users, data-triggered processing requires a valid Unix user ID in order to list files independently of any actual user. Therefore the triggerUserID property is used to configure which user ID should be used (as always in UNICORE, this cannot be root, and multiuser operation requires the TSI!).

For example, you might have a project storage configured like this:

#
# Shares
#
coreServices.sms.share.enabledShares=PROJECTS

coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.name=projects
coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.description=Shared projects
coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.path=/opt/shared-data
coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.defaultUmask=007
coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.disableTrigger=false
coreServices.sms.share.PROJECTS.triggerUserID=projects01

Here the scanning settings are only evaluated top-level.

For each included directory, a separate scan is done, controlled by another .UNICORE_Rules file in that directory. So the directory structure could look like this:

├── dir1
│   ├── ...
│   └── .UNICORE_Rules
├── dir2
│   ├── ...
│   └── .UNICORE_Rules
├── dir3
│   ├── ...
│   └── .UNICORE_Rules
└── .UNICORE_Rules

The top-level .UNICORE_Rules file must list the included directories. Processing the included directories is then done using the owner of that directory.

14.4. Rules

The "Rules" section in the .UNICORE_Rules file is a list of file match specifications together with a definition of an "action", i.e. what should be done for those files that match.

The general syntax is

{
"DirectoryScan": {
  "IncludeDirs": [...],
  "ExcludeDirs": [...]
},

"Rules": [
  {
    "Name": "foo",
    "Match": ".*incoming/file_.*",
    "Action": { ... }
   }
]
}

The mandatory elements are

  • Name : the name of the rule. This is useful when checking the logfiles,

  • Match : a regular expression defining which file paths (relative to storage root) should be processed,

  • Action : the action to be taken.

14.4.1. Variables

The following variables can be used in the Action description.

  • UC_BASE_DIR : the storage root directory

  • UC_CURRENT_DIR : the absolute path to the parent directory of the current file

  • UC_FILE_PATH : the full path to the current file

  • UC_FILE_NAME : the file name

14.4.2. Scripts

This type of action defines a script that is executed on the cluster login node (TSI node).

"Action":
{
 "Name": "local_example",
 "Type": "LOCAL",
 "Command": "/bin/md5sum ${UC_FILE_PATH}",
 "Outcome": "output_directory",
 "Stdout": "${UC_FILE_NAME}.md5",
 "Stderr": "${UC_FILE_NAME}.error"
}

14.4.3. Batch jobs

This type of action defines a batch job that is submitted to the resource management system of your cluster.

"Action":
{
 "Name": "batch_example",
 "Type": "BATCH",
 "Job": { ... }
}

The Job element is a normal UNICORE job in the same syntax as used for the UCC commandline client.

14.4.4. Automated metadata extraction

"Action":
{
 "Name": "extract_example",
 "Type": "EXTRACT",
 "Settings": { ... }
}

This action will extract metadata from the file. The Settings element is currently unused.

15. Authorization back-end (PDP) guide

The authorization process in UNICORE/X requires that nearly all operations must be authorized prior to execution (exceptions may be safely ignored).

UNICORE allows to choose which authorization back-end is used. The module which is responsible for this operation is called Policy Decision Point (PDP). You can choose one among already available PDP modules or even develop your own engine.

Local PDPs use a set of policy files to reach an authorisation decision, remote PDPs query a remote service.

Local UNICORE PDPs use the XACML language to express the authorization policy. The XACML policy language is introduced in the Guide to XACML security policies. You can also review this guide if you want to have a deeper understanding of the authorization process.

15.1. Basic configuration

Note

The full list of options related to PDP is available here: [use-secref].

There are three options which are relevant to all PDPs:

  • container.security.accesscontrol (values: true or false) This boolean property can be used to completely turn off the authorization. This guide makes sense only if this option is set to true. Except for test scenarios this should never be switched off, otherwise every user can in principle access all resources on the server.

  • container.security.accesscontrol.pdp (value: full class name) This property is used to choose which PDP module is being used.

  • container.security.accesscontrol.pdpConfig (value: file path) This property provides a location of a configuration file of the selected PDP.

15.2. Available PDP modules

15.2.1. XACML 2.0 PDP

The implementation class of this module is: eu.unicore.uas.pdp.local.LocalHerasafPDP so to enable this module use the following configuration in uas.config:

container.security.accesscontrol.pdpConfig=<CONFIG_DIR>/xacml2.conf
container.security.accesscontrol.pdp=eu.unicore.uas.pdp.local.LocalHerasafPDP

The configuration file content is very simplistic as it is enough to define only few options:

# The directory where XACML 2.0 policy files are stored
localpdp.directory=conf/xacml2Policies

# Wildcard expression to select actual policy files from the directory defined above
localpdp.filesWildcard=*.xml

# Combining algorithm for the policies. You can use the full XACML id or its last part.
localpdp.combiningAlg=first-applicable

The policies from the localpdp.directory are always evaluated in alphabetical order, so it is good to name files with a number. By default the first-applicable combining algorithm is used and UNICORE policy is stored in two files: 01coreServices.xml and 99finalDeny.xml. The first file contains the default access policy, the latter a single fall through deny rule. Therefore you can put your own policies using an additional file in file named e.g. 50localRules.xml.

The policies are reloaded whenever you change (or touch) the configuration file of this PDP, e.g. like this:

touch conf/xacml2.conf

15.2.2. XACML 1.x PDP

The implementation class of this module is: eu.unicore.uas.pdp.localsun.LocalSunPDP so to enable this module use the following configuration in uas.config:

container.security.accesscontrol.pdpConfig=conf/xacml.config
container.security.accesscontrol.pdp=eu.unicore.uas.pdp.localsun.LocalSunPDP

This module is the one that was the only available option in UNICORE prior to the release 6.4.0

The rules are contained in one or more policy files as listed in the xacml.config configuration file. However note that in case of this legacy implementation it mostly doesn’t make sense to use more then one file as it not possible to control the combining algorithm (which would be only-one-applicable). Therefore the configuration file is rather absolutely constant:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config xmlns="http://sunxacml.sourceforge.net/schema/config-0.3"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        defaultPDP="pdp" defaultAttributeFactory="attr"
        defaultCombiningAlgFactory="comb" defaultFunctionFactory="func">
  <pdp name="pdp">
    <attributeFinderModule class="com.sun.xacml.finder.impl.CurrentEnvModule"/>
    <attributeFinderModule class="com.sun.xacml.finder.impl.SelectorModule"/>
    <policyFinderModule class="com.sun.xacml.finder.impl.FilePolicyModule">
      <list>
        <string>conf/security_policy.xml</string>
      </list>
    </policyFinderModule>
  </pdp>
  <attributeFactory name="attr" useStandardDatatypes="true"/>
  <combiningAlgFactory name="comb" useStandardAlgorithms="true"/>
  <functionFactory name="func" useStandardFunctions="true">

  </functionFactory>
</config>

In case you modified the policy file(s), you can force a reload into the running server by "touch"ing the xacml.conf configuration file. For example, under Unix you can execute

touch conf/xacml.conf

Opening the file in an editor and saving it will also do the trick.

15.2.3. Remote SAML/XACML 2.0 PDP with Argus PAP

Note

Releases 6.5.x of UNICORE offered an other Argus PDP implementation which allows for off-sourcing authorisation decision to a remote Argus PDP daemon. While this implementation was working, in the Argus policy language it is impossible to express any rules using the resource owner. Therefore creation of a functional policy for UNICORE with Argus is barely possible and this implementation was dropped in UNICORE 6.6.0.

This PDP allows for mixing local policies with policies downloaded from a remote server using SAML protocol for XACML policy query. This protocol is implemented by Argus PAP server Argus PAP. Please note that under the name Argus there is a whole portfolio of services, but for purpose of UNICORE integration Argus PAP is the only one required.

Usage of Argus PAP together with UNICORE policies is useful as Argus PAP allows for a quite easy editing of authorization policies with its Simplified Policy Language. It is less powerful then XACML but allows for performing all the typical tasks like banning selected users or VOs. Also if Argus is used to provide authorization rules for other middleware installed at the site (as gLite or ARC), it might be desirable to have a single place to store site-wide policies.

Unfortunately as Argus policy can not fully take over the UNICORE authorization (see the above note for details), the Argus policy must be combined with the classic UNICORE XACML 2 policy, stored locally.

The implementation class of this module is: eu.unicore.uas.pdp.argus.ArgusPDP so to enable this module use the following configuration in uas.config:

container.security.accesscontrol.pdpConfig=<CONFIG_DIR>/argus.config
container.security.accesscontrol.pdp=eu.unicore.uas.pdp.argus.ArgusPAP

The PDP configuration is very simple as it is only required to provide the Argus endpoint and query timeout (in milliseconds).

# The directory where XACML 2.0 policy files are stored
#  (both local and downloaded from Argus PAP)
localpdp.directory=conf/xacml2PoliciesWithArgus

# Wildcard expression to select actual policy files from the directory defined above
localpdp.filesWildcard=*.xml

# Combining algorithm for the policies. You can use the full XACML id or its last part.
#  This algorithm will be used to combine the Argus and local policies.
localpdp.combiningAlg=first-applicable

# Address of the Argus PAP server. Typically only the hostname needs to be changed,
#  rarely the port.
argus.pap.serverAddress=https://localhost:8150/pap/services/ProvisioningService

# What is the name of a file to which a downloaded Argus policy is saved.
#  Note that name of this file is very important as it determines policies evaluation order.
#  Here the Argus policy will be evaluated first.
argus.pap.policysetFilename=00argus.xml

# How often (in ms) the Argus PAP should be queried for a new policy
argus.pap.queryInterval=3600000

# What is the Argus query timeout in ms.
argus.pap.queryTimeout=15000

# If Argus PAP is unavailable for that long (in ms) the PDP will black all users
# assuming that the policy is outdated. Use negative value to disable this feature.
argus.pap.deny.timeout=36000000

You can use both http and https addresses. In the latter case server’s certificate is used to make the connection. Note that all localpdp.* settings are the same as in case of the default, local XACML 2.0 PDP.

Using the available configuration options, it is possible to merge Argus policies in many different ways. Here we present a simple pattern, which is good for cases when Argus is used to ban users (it was also applied to the example above):

  • Argus policy should be saved to a file which will be evaluated first, e.g. 00argus.xml

  • Default XACML 2.0 policies of UNICORE local PDP should be added to the directory, without any changes.

  • The policy combining algorithm should be first-applicable

  • Argus PAP policies should include a series of deny statements (see Argus documentation for details) and no final permit (or deny) fall-trough rule.

Then Argus policy will be evaluated first. If any banning rule matches the user then it will be denied by the Argus policy. Otherwise it will be non-applicable and the local, default UNICORE policy will be evaluated. Note that if it is problematic for other (non-UNICORE) services using Argus, to remove the final fall-through permit or deny rule, then you can add such rule, but with a proper resource statement so it will be applicable only for non-UNICORE components.

Of course it is also possible to creatively design other patterns, when for instance Argus policy is evaluated as a second one.

16. Guide to XACML security policies

XACML authorization policies need not to be modified on a day-to-day basis when running the UNICORE server. The most common tasks as banning or allowing users can be performed very easily using UNICORE Attribute Sources like XUUDB or Unity. This guide is intended for advanced administrators who want to change the non-standard authorization process and for developers who want to provide authorization policies for services they create.

The XACML standard is a powerful way to express fine grained access control. The idea is to have XML policies describing how and by whom actions on resources can be performed. A very readable introduction into XACML can be found with Sun’s XACML implementation.

There are several versions of XACML policy language. Currently UNICORE supports both 1.x and 2.0 versions. Those are quite similar and use same concepts, however note that syntax is a bit different. In this guide we provide examples using XACML 2.0. The same examples in the legacy XACML 1.1 format are available in xref:use_policies-11.

UNICORE allows to choose one of several authorization back-end implementations called Policy Decision Points (PDP). Among others you can decide whether to use local XACML 1.x policies or local XACML 2.0 policies. The authorization section shows how to choose and configure each of the available PDPs.

In UNICORE terms XACML is used as follows. Before each operation (i.e. execution of a web service call), an XACML request is generated, which currently includes the following attributes:

XACML attribute name XACML category XACML type Description

urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id

Resource

AnyURI

WS service name

urn:unicore:wsresource

Resource

String

Identifier of the WSRF resource instance (if any).

owner

Resource

X.500 name

The name of the VO resource owner.

voMembership-VONAME

Resource

String

For each VO the accessed resource is a member, there is such attribute with the VONAME set to the VO, and with the value specifying allowed access type, using the same action categories as are used for the actionType attribute.

actionType

Action

String

Action type or category. Currently read for read-only operation and modify for others.

urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:action:action-id

Action

String

WS operation name.

urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:subject:subject-id

Subject

X.500 name

User’s DN.

role

Subject

String

The user’s role.

consignor

Subject

X.500 name

Client’s (consignor’s) DN.

vo

Subject

Strings

Bag with all VOs the user is member of (if any).

selectedVo

Subject

String

The effective, selected VO (if any).

Note that the above list is valid for the default local XACML 2 and legacy XACML 1.x PDPs. For others the attributes might be different - see the respective documentation.

The request is processed by the server and checked against a (set of) policies. Policies contain rules that can either deny or permit a request, using a powerful set of functions.

16.1. Policy sets and combining of results

Typically, the authorization policy is stored in one file. However as this file can get long and unmanageable sometimes it is better to split it into several ones. This additionally allows to easily plug additional policies to the existing authorization process. In UNICORE, this feature is implemented in the XAML 2.0 PDP.

When policies are split in multiple files each of those files must contain (at least one) a separate policy. A PDP must somehow combine result of evaluation of multiple policies. This is done by so-called policy combining algorithm. The following algorithms are available, the part after last colon describes behaviour of each:

urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.1:policy-combining-algorithm:ordered-permit-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:permit-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.1:policy-combining-algorithm:ordered-deny-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:deny-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:first-applicable
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy-combining-algorithm:only-one-applicable

Each policy file can contain one or more rules, so it is important to understand how possible conflicts are resolved. The so-called combining algorithm for the rules in a single policy file is specified in the top-level Policy element.

The XACML (from version 1.1 onwards) specification defines six algorithms: permit-overrides, deny-overrides, first-applicable, only-one-applicable, ordered-permit-overrides and ordered-deny-overrides. For example, to specify that the first matching rule in the policy file is used to make the decision, the Policy element must contain the following "RuleCombiningAlgId" attribute:

<Policy xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:2.0:policy:schema:os"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        PolicyId="ExamplePolicy"
        RuleCombiningAlgId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:first-applicable">

The full identifiers of the combining algorithms are as follows:

urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:deny-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:permit-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.1:rule-combining-algorithm:ordered-deny-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.1:rule-combining-algorithm:ordered-permit-overrides
urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:first-applicable

16.2. Role-based access to services

A common use case is to allow/permit access to a certain service based on a user’s role This can be achieved with the following XACML rule, which describes that a user with role "admin" is given access to all services.

<Rule RuleId="Permit:Admin" Effect="Permit">
        <Description> Role "admin" may do anything. </Description>
        <Target />
        <Condition>
          <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
            <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-one-and-only">
                <SubjectAttributeDesignator
                    DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="role" />
            </Apply>
            <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">admin</AttributeValue>
          </Apply>
        </Condition>
</Rule>

If the access should be limited to a certain service, the Target element must contain a service identifier, as follows. In this example, access to the DataService is granted to those who have the data-access role.

<Rule RuleId="rule2" Effect="Permit">
        <Description>Allow users with role "data-access" access to the DataService</Description>
        <Target>
          <Resources>
            <Resource>
              <ResourceMatch MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:anyURI-equal">
                <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">DataService</AttributeValue>
                <ResourceAttributeDesignator AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id"
                                             DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI" MustBePresent="true" />
              </ResourceMatch>
            </Resource>
          </Resources>
        </Target>

        <Condition>
          <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
            <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-one-and-only">
              <SubjectAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="role" />
            </Apply>
           <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">data-access</AttributeValue>
          </Apply>
        </Condition>

By using the <Action> tag in policies, web service access can be controlled on the method level. In principle, XACML supports even control based on the content of some XML document, such as the incoming SOAP request. However this is not yet used in UNICORE/X.

16.3. Limiting access to services to the service instance owner

Most service instances (corresponding e.g. to jobs, or files) should only ever be accessed by their owner. This rule is expressed as follows:

<Rule RuleId="Permit:AnyResource_for_its_owner" Effect="Permit">
        <Description> Access to any resource is granted for its owner </Description>
        <Target />
        <Condition>
          <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-equal">
            <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-one-and-only">
              <SubjectAttributeDesignator AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:subject:subject-id"
                                          DataType="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:data-type:x500Name"
                                          MustBePresent="true" />
            </Apply>
            <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-one-and-only">
              <ResourceAttributeDesignator
                AttributeId="owner" DataType="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:data-type:x500Name"
                MustBePresent="true" />
            </Apply>
          </Apply>
        </Condition>
</Rule>

16.4. More details on XACML use in UNICORE/X

To get more detailed information about XACML policies (e.g. to get the list of all available functions etc) consult the XACML specification. To get more information on XACML use in UNICORE/X it is good to set the logging level of security messages to DEBUG:

log4j.logger.unicore.security=DEBUG

You will be able to read what input is given to the XACML engine and what is the detailed answer. Alternatively, ask on the support mailing list.

16.5. Policy examples in XACML 1.1 syntax

This section contains the same examples as are contained in the previous section, but using XACML 1.x syntax. For more detailed discussion of each example please refer to the previous section.

Policy header with first-applicable combining algorithm.

<Policy xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:policy"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        PolicyId="ExamplePolicy"
        RuleCombiningAlgId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:rule-combining-algorithm:first-applicable">

A user with role "admin" is given access to all service.

<Rule RuleId="rule1" Effect="Permit">
 <Description>Allow users with role "admin" access to any service</Description>
    <Target>
      <Subjects>
        <AnySubject/>
      </Subjects>
      <Resources>
        <AnyResource/>
      </Resources>
      <Actions>
        <AnyAction/>
      </Actions>
    </Target>
 <Condition FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
   <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-one-and-only">
     <SubjectAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="role" />
   </Apply>
   <!-- here is the role value -->
   <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">admin</AttributeValue>
 </Condition>
 /Rule>

Defining which resource access is defined with the Target element:

<Rule RuleId="rule2" Effect="Permit">
 <Description>Allow users with role "data-access" access to the DataService</Description>
    <Target>
      <Subjects>
        <AnySubject/>
      </Subjects>
      <Resources>
       <!-- specify the data service -->
       <Resource>
        <ResourceMatch MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:anyURI-equal">
          <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">DataService</AttributeValue>
          <ResourceAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI"
                                       AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id"/>
        </ResourceMatch>
      </Resource>
      </Resources>
      <Actions>
        <AnyAction/>
      </Actions>
    </Target>
 <Condition FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
   <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-one-and-only">
     <SubjectAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="role" />
   </Apply>
   <!-- here is the role value -->
   <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">data-access</AttributeValue>
 </Condition>
 /Rule>

Allowing access for the resource owner:

<Rule RuleId="PermitJobManagementServiceForOwner" Effect="Permit">
  <Description>testing</Description>
  <Target>
    <Subjects> <AnySubject/> </Subjects>
    <Resources>
      <Resource>
        <ResourceMatch MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:anyURI-equal">
          <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">JobManagementService</AttributeValue>
          <ResourceAttributeDesignator AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id" DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI" MustBePresent="true"/>
        </ResourceMatch>
      </Resource>
    </Resources>
    <Actions> <AnyAction/> </Actions>
  </Target>
  <Condition FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-equal">
    <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-one-and-only">
      <SubjectAttributeDesignator AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:subject:subject-id" DataType="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:data-type:x500Name" MustBePresent="true"/>
    </Apply>
    <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:x500Name-one-and-only">
      <ResourceAttributeDesignator AttributeId="owner" DataType="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:data-type:x500Name" MustBePresent="true"/>
    </Apply>
  </Condition>
</Rule>

17. Virtual Organisations (VO) Support

VO (Virtual Organisation) is a quite broad concept. VO server software is used to store identities of grid entities along with their attributes. Entities are managed with the usage of groups to help administration. Those attributes can be used e.g. for authorization purposes. It is described here how to take advantage of this approach in any USE based service.

17.1. Overview

17.1.1. Features

All the below features can be used in any combinations, independently:

  • Unity VOs can provide all incarnation attributes, also those which are unsupported by the more simple attribute sources (including full support for default and allowed attributes). Therefore it can be used as a central service for multiple sites providing incarnation settings. As attributes can be assigned in a group scope, it is possible to use a central service with mappings, still having some of the values (for instance uids) which are different for each site. It is simple to assign same attribute for groups of users.

  • It is possible to assign non-standard attributes and use them for access authorization.

  • As it is possible (as always in UNICORE) to mix attributes from multiple attribute sources, VO can provide grid wide settings (as UNICORE role), while local settings (like gids or uids) are assigned locally by particular sites. This is especially useful when using a dynamic attribute source as a complementary one to the static VO attribute source: VO source provides then authorization attributes (VO membership, role) and dynamic source assigns local uids/gids basing on the VO attributes.

17.1.2. The modes

There are two basic modes of operation supported by this subsystem:

  • PULL mode In this mode attributes are pulled (fetched) by the module from a VO service specified in a configuration file when a new request arrives. This mode is transparent for clients.

  • PUSH mode In this mode it is user’s software responsibility to retrieve attributes from a VO service. The VO service must return the attributes in a digitally signed document which is called an attribute assertion. This assertion must be attached to the client’s request. The module only verifies if the assertion is correct and if is signed by a trusted VO service.

It is possible to use both modes simultaneously.

17.1.3. VO selection

Some of the VO features as authorization, require only information about all VO the user is the member and associated attributes. However in many cases it is required to assign user’s request to a particular VO and to execute it in the VO scope. This is for instance needed when a special gid is assigned basing on the user’s VO or when VOs should be charged for their jobs.

To associate a request with a VO the user has to select one or administrator can define a default which is used when user didn’t select a VO. User can select an effective VO using request preference selectedVirtualOrganisation. Of course it must be one of the VOs the user is member of. Alternatively user can use the push mode: if the pushed assertion contains only a single VO membership attribute, this VO is used as the selected one.

Administrator can configure a list of preferred VOs. If such list is provided, then the first VO from the list, where the user is a member is used when user don’t provide her own selection. See the general security configuration options for the syntax: [use-secref].

If it is required that all requests should have the effective VO set, then it is possible to deny other requests using an additional rule in the authorization policy. The rule should deny all requests that doesn’t have the selectedVO authorization attribute. See [use_policies] for details.

17.1.4. Supported VO servers

Currently there are several implementations of services that can be used as server side. This module was tested and works well with the Unity system. Additionally VOMS system can be used (see VOMS Support for details). There are other possibilities and you can try to use any SAML (2.0) Attribute service. We are interested in all success/failure stories!

17.1.5. VO deployment planning

First of all it must be decided which VO/group (in UNICORE case it absolutely doesn’t matter whether a VO or VO subgroup is used, all subgroups can be treated as a full-fledged VOs, and VOs are just a nick-name of top-level groups) is used by a site.

In case when site needs only generic, grid-wide attributes from a VO, a group which is common for all sites should be used. Such group can provide for instance role attribute for the members. Of course if uids are the same across all sites, then uids can be also assigned in such VO.

In case when site needs also some site-specific attributes, a dedicated group should be created for the site, as a subgroup of a VO (e.g /VO1/sites/SiteA). VO administrators should assign VO-scoped attributes in this group and make sure that all universal VO attributes are also replicated there. Please note that Unity allows for outsourcing VO management on a per-group basis, so it is possible to assign administrative permissions to such group, for a site representative.

The next issue is how to handle a situation when there are multiple Xlogins/roles available for the user, and how to mark the default one? To overcome this, for every incarnation attribute it is possible to define two VO attributes. Base one can possess many values (e.g. in case of Xlogins every value is a different Xlogin) while the additional attribute holds a single default value. When there is no need for multiple values then the base attribute can be used alone. When default attribute is defined then its value is used unless a user provided some preferences. Of course such preferences must be valid, i.e. be included in the allowed values of the base attribute. This is useful in PULL mode. In PUSH mode user has a freedom of choice. She can use the same approach as in the PULL mode or she can ignore default one, select one of the base values and present only that one to the service.

Details on what attributes are used for those purposes are presented in the following section.

17.2. Configuration

This sections describes the default configuration file format which is used to configure VO attribute source. This section provides a detailed and comrehensive information on all configuration options. In the most cases defaults are fine - you can consult the HOWTO (below) for a short quick start information.

Some of the configuration options require value of a VO/GROUP type. Whenever it is needed it should be written in the following way:

/VO[/group1[/subgroup2[...]]]

where elements in square brackets are optional. E.g. /Math/users denotes a group users of a VO called Math.

In case of Unicore/X and other USE servers the configuration is provided in a separate file, by default the vo.config from the configuration directory of the server (you can change location and name of this file, see below). It holds generic VO configuration which is not dependent to the actual server used - the most of settings is configured there. This file options are described below.

To enable the VO subsystem certain settings are also required in the main server’s configuration file. You have to define an appropriate Attribute Source. There are two VO-related Attribute Sources: one for each mode. You can add them both, only one or even use them multiple times. The latter situation occurs when you want to support multiple VOs (from one or multiple VO servers) - then you have to define one attribute source per VO (or VO group).

Example with both PUSH and PULL VO attribute sources and also with local XUUDB. Local data from XUUDB (if exists) will override attributes received from VOs (in any mode):

container.security.attributes.order=SAML-PUSH SAML-PULL XUUDB
# ... here comes xuudb configuration

container.security.attributes.SAML-PUSH.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.vo.SAMLPushAuthoriser
container.security.attributes.SAML-PUSH.configurationFile=conf/vo.config

container.security.attributes.SAML-PULL.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.vo.SAMLPullAuthoriser
container.security.attributes.SAML-PULL.configurationFile=conf/vo.config

The ZZZ.configurationFile configuration option is not necessary if you want to use the conf/vo.config file for both attribute sources (as conf/vo.config is a default configuration file). However this option is very important when you want to use more then one SAML-PULL attribute source, as it allows you to use different configuration files for them.

When using both PUSH and PULL mode together you can disable PULL mode dynamically for those requests that contain pushed assertions only. See vo.pull.disableIfAttributesWerePushed configuration option.

Before proceeding to fill the VO configuration it is suggested to prepare the VO truststore, which should contain ONLY the certificates of the trusted VO servers. Note that this file must not contain any CA certificates, only the trusted VO servers' certificates! This file is necessary for the PUSH mode, and optionally can be used for the PULL mode to increase security.

Logging configuration is done by means of standard UNICORE logging configuration file. See [use_vo_logging] section for possible settings related to the VO subsystem.

Note that in Unicore/X there is a simple program which allows you to test VO Push setup. The application is called without arguments and is called testVOPull.

17.2.1. Main VO configuration file

The main configuration file (usually vo.config) can be used to configure both PULL and PUSH modes. The following sections provide complete reference of available options.

Property name Type Default value / mandatory Description

--- General ---

vo.group

string

-

VO or group which is accepted by this attribute source. Server will honour only attributes with exactly this scope or global (i.e. without scope set).This will work only with legacy UVOS service, for Unity configure proper scope at server side.

vo.truststore.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties starting with this prefix are used to configure validation of VO assertion issuers certificates. Trust anchors should contain only the trusted VO servers certificates. All options are the same as those for other UNICORE truststores.

vo.unicoreAttribute.[.*]

string can have subkeys

-

Properties starting with this prefix are used to configure mappings of SAML attributes to UNICORE internal ones.

vo.voServerURI

string

-

Identification URI of the VO service providing attribtues for this source. Only attributes issued by this issuer will be honoured.

--- Pull mode ---

vo.localServerURI

string

-

Can contain this, local server SAML identifier, to be used in SAML requests in PULL mode. If unset then DN identity is used for queries, created from the local server’s credential.

vo.pull.cacheTtl

integer number

600

Controls pulled attributes cache. Set to negative integer to disable the caching or to positive number - lifetime in seconds of cached entries.

vo.pull.disableIfAttributesWerePushed

[true, false]

true

Whether pull mode should be skipped if user sent (or pushed) some attributes with the request. Note that to make this feature work PUSH mode must be enabled AND PULL authorization must be invoked AFTER PUSH authorization.

vo.pull.enable

[true, false]

false

Defines if pull mode should be enabled.

vo.pull.enableGenericAttributes

[true, false]

true

If turned on, then not only the recognized UNICORE attributes are processed, but also all others, which can be used for authorization.

vo.pull.verifySignatures

[true, false]

true

Additional security for the pulled assertions (except transport level which is always on) can be achieved by verification of signatures of the received assertions. The key which is used for verification must be present in the VO truststore.

vo.pull.voServerURL

string

localhost

Full address (URL) of SAML VO service. Note that this server’s CA cert must be present in the main truststore of the server to create the connection.

--- Push mode ---

vo.push.enable

[true, false]

false

Defines if push mode should be enabled.

The following table shows options, which are used to define mappings of SAML attributes to UNICORE incarnation attributes (the available names of UNICORE incarnation attributes are provided in [use_incarnation-attributes]).

Property name Range of values Description

vo.unicoreAttribute.NAME

URI

Value must be a SAML attribute name which will be used as a UNICORE internal incarnation attribute NAME.

vo.unicoreAttribute.NAME.default

URI

Value must be a SAML attribute name which will be used as a default for UNICORE internal incarnation attribute NAME.

vo.unicoreAttribute.NAME.disabled

ANY, IGNORED

When this attribute is present regardless of its value the NAME attribute won’t be mapped.

vo.unicoreAttribute.NAME.pullDisabled

ANY, IGNORED

When this attribute is present regardless of its value the pulled NAME attributes won’t be mapped.

vo.unicoreAttribute.NAME.pushDisabled

ANY, IGNORED

When this attribute is present regardless of its value the pushed NAME attributes won’t be mapped.

17.2.2. Example mapping for Unity attributes

Note that your distribution should contain a sensible default for Unity attribute mappings, which does not need to be modified.

# standard settings for the xlogin mapping, however let's ignore pushed xlogins
vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin=urn:unicore:attrType:xlogin
vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultXlogin
vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin.pushDisabled=

#standard role mapping
vo.unicoreAttribute.role=urn:unicore:attrType:role
vo.unicoreAttribute.role.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultRole

#supplementary groups are stored in a non standard attribute
vo.unicoreAttribute.supplementaryGroups=urn:ourCompany:secondaryGids

#and group - without default
vo.unicoreAttribute.group=urn:unicore:attrType:primaryGid

#queue mapping is defined, but will be ignored (disabled)
vo.unicoreAttribute.queue=urn:unicore:attrType:queue
vo.unicoreAttribute.queue.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultQueue
vo.unicoreAttribute.queue.disable=

# addDefaultGroups - is not defined, so won't be mapped

#getting the user's groups is always a good idea
vo.unicoreAttribute.virtualOrganisations=urn:SAML:voprofile:group

17.2.3. Using VOMS-Admin with UNICORE

Attributes released by VOMS-Admin can be consumed by the UNICORE services, since its release 2.6.2. However note the following VOMS-Admin shortcomings (in comparison to usage of Unity):

  • Current version of VOMS does not support a PULL mode. I.e. only the PUSH mode is possible.

  • VOMS does not allow for attribute scoping for attributes other then the role. Therefore it is possible to store only uid/gid mapping for a single site in a VO easily. With some effort one can store different mappings for a user too, but this requires administrator to use a different attribute for each mapping (e.g. xlogin-vsite1, xlogin-vsite2, …).

  • VOMS does not allow for storing multiple values per a generic attribute (any other then the role attribute). Therefore it is not possible to define more then one allowed xlogin/group/queue/… per user.

To use VOMS-Admin first of all it must have a SAML endpoint enabled (note that it is disabled by default).

Additionally one must take special care to set up properly attribute mappings as VOMS uses different attributes as Unity. The following configuration is good as a starting point:

#These must not be changed
vo.unicoreAttribute.role=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/role
vo.unicoreAttribute.role.default=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/role/primary
vo.unicoreAttribute.virtualOrganisations=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/group

#Values of these attributes depend on VOMS generic attributes used and should match.
vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin=xlogin
vo.unicoreAttribute.group=group
vo.unicoreAttribute.supplementaryGroups=supplementaryGroup
vo.unicoreAttribute.addDefaultGroups=addDefaultGids
vo.unicoreAttribute.queue=queue

Note that the only possibility to pass the information about xlogin, groups and queue is using the so called VOMS generic attributes. You can choose any names for them in VOMS-Admin, but the names must match with your UNICORE configuration. The names of other attributes (VO and role) are fixed. Also note that, as VOMS supports only a single value for a generic attribute, supplementary groups and queue attributes are barely usable.

17.2.4. Logging configuration

All components use log4j logging mechanism. All events are logged with unicore.security.vo prefix. Further logging category is either pull, push or common. Finally reporting class name is appended.

Example snippet of log4j configuration for logging all events for VO subsystem but only INFO and higher events for PUSH mode can be specified as follows:

log4j.logger.unicore.security.vo=TRACE
log4j.logger.unicore.security.vo.push=INFO

17.3. VO configuration HOWTOs

17.3.1. SAML-PULL and UNICORE - basic case

This section shows all the steps which are required to setup a UNICORE/X server and Unity to work in the SAML-PULL mode. In this scenario we will use Unity to store at a central point mappings of certificates to UNIX logins (Xlogins) and roles of of our users. The UNICORE/X server will then query (pull) attributes from Unity, similar to using an XUUDB.

Note

We write UNICORE/X in the following, but any server based on the UNICORE Services Environment (registry, workflow, servorch, etc) works the same way

The required steps are:

  1. Add Unity’s CA certificate to the UNICORE/X truststore (so SSL connections can be established)

  2. Add UNICORE/X’s CA certificate to the Unity server’s truststore (so SSL connections can be established).

  3. Often this step is optional. If you enable trust delegation support in the VO configuration file (what is the default) you can jump to the next point. However note that some services (very rarely) do not forward trust delegation assertions so it is better to perform this step to be 100% sure everything will work always correctly.

    Add the UNICORE/X server’s DN (from its certificate) as a member to the Unity service. You don’t have to make it a member of any particular VO (or group). However it must have the read permission to all groups where its users will be placed. The Unity documentation contains details.

  4. Create a VO (possibly with subgroups). Add grid users to the group. Here we will assume this group is /Math-VO/UUDB/SiteA. Next assign them in the scope of the group attribute urn:unicore:attrType:xlogin with the value of Xlogin for the user, and attribute urn:unicore:attrType:role with the value of the user’s role (usually its just user). Note that if you want to assign the same Xlogin/role to multiple users then you can define Unity group attributes and set them for the whole /Math-VO/UUDB/SiteA group.

  5. Enable VO attribute source in the UNICORE server. Here we will configure SAML-PULL as the primary source and leave XUUDB to provide local mappings (which can override data fetched from Unity). You should have the following entries:

    container.security.attributes.order=SAML-PULL XUUDB
    container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy=MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES
    # ...  xuudb configuration omitted
    
    container.security.attributes.SAML-PULL.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.vo.SAMLPullAuthoriser
  6. Configure VO attribute source (typically in the vo.config) file as follows:

    vo.group=/Math-VO/UUDB/SiteA
    
    vo.truststore.type=directory
    vo.truststore.directoryLocations.1=/opt/unicore/vo-certificates/*.pem
    
    vo.localServerURI=http://example.org:7777
    
    # ##########################
    # PULL mode configuration
    # ##########################
    
    vo.pull.enable=true
    
    vo.pull.cacheTtl=20
    
    vo.pull.voHost=unity.example.org
    vo.pull.voPort=2443
    vo.pull.voPath=
    
    vo.pull.verifySignatures=false
    
    vo.pull.enableTrustDelegation=true
    
    # Mapping of Unity attributes (right side) to the special, recognized by UNICORE
    #  incarnation attributes (left)
    vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin=urn:unicore:attrType:xlogin
    vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultXlogin
    vo.unicoreAttribute.role=urn:unicore:attrType:role
    vo.unicoreAttribute.role.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultRole
    vo.unicoreAttribute.group=urn:unicore:attrType:primaryGid
    vo.unicoreAttribute.group.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultPrimaryGid
    vo.unicoreAttribute.supplementaryGroups=urn:unicore:attrType:supplementaryGids
    vo.unicoreAttribute.supplementaryGroups.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultSupplementaryGids
    vo.unicoreAttribute.addDefaultGroups=urn:unicore:attrType:addDefaultGroups
    vo.unicoreAttribute.queue=urn:unicore:attrType:queue
    vo.unicoreAttribute.queue.default=urn:unicore:attrType:defaultQueue
    vo.unicoreAttribute.virtualOrganisations=urn:SAML:voprofile:group
  7. In the VO truststore directory (/opt/unicore/vo-certificates in this case) put the Unity certificate (not the CA certificate) there as a PEM file, with pem extension.

17.3.2. Unity and UNICORE - using fine grained authorization

In this scenario we will enhance the first one to use custom authorization attributes in UNICORE policy. To do so ensure that you have this setting in vo.config file: vo.pull.enableGenericAttributes=true. Then you can modify XACML policy to require certain VO attributes.

Important fact to note here (and in case of PUSH mode too) is how the user’s group membership is encoded as an XACML attribute. By default it is an attribute of string type (so XACML DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string") with its name (AttributeId) equal to urn:SAML:voprofile:group. The example policy below uses this attribute.

The following XACML fragment allows for reaching TargetSystemFactory service only for the users which are both members of VO Example-VO and a VO group /Math-VO/UUDB/SiteA. Moreover those users also must have a standard UNICORE/X attribute role with a value user. It means that in Unity, UNICORE users must have urn:unicore:attrType:role attribute defined (it is the standard setting) with a value user.

<Rule RuleId="AcceptTSF" Effect="Permit">
  <Description>
    Accept selected users to reach TSF
    </Description>
  <Target>
    <Resources>
      <Resource>
        <ResourceMatch MatchId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:anyURI-equal">
          <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI">TargetSystemFactoryService</AttributeValue>
          <ResourceAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#anyURI" AttributeId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:resource:resource-id"/>
        </ResourceMatch>
      </Resource>
    </Resources>
  </Target>
  <Condition>
    <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:and">
      <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal">
        <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-one-and-only">
          <SubjectAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="role"/>
        </Apply>
        <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">user</AttributeValue>
      </Apply>
      <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:any-of-all">
        <Function FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-equal"/>
        <SubjectAttributeDesignator DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string" AttributeId="urn:SAML:voprofile:group"/>
        <Apply FunctionId="urn:oasis:names:tc:xacml:1.0:function:string-bag">
          <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">/Example-VO</AttributeValue>
          <AttributeValue DataType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">/Math-VO/UUDB/SiteA</AttributeValue>
        </Apply>
      </Apply>
    </Apply>
  </Condition>
</Rule>

17.3.3. PUSH-mode with VOMS

This section shows all the basic steps which are required to setup a UNICORE server and VOMS to work in PUSH mode. Note that VOMS currently doesn’t support PULL mode at all. If you want to use Unity in the PUSH mode, this howto is also a good starting point - the only difference is that you should use attribute mappings from the first, Unity scenario.

VOMS usage is limited as it can only provide one group scoped attribute: role. Therefore account mappings (and other site-specific attributes) must be stored elsewhere (e.g. in local file or XUUDB database), or all mappings stored in VOMS must be the same for all scopes.

The required steps are:

  1. Add VOMS server’s certificate to to the VO truststore (the point 7 in the first scenario).

  2. Create a VO (possibly with subgroups) in VOMS. Add grid users to the VO and assign them appropriate attributes. Note that the default UNICORE authorization policy uses the user role for normal users.

  3. Enable VO PULL attribute source in UNICORE configuration. Here we will configure VOMS-PULL as the primary source and leave XUUDB to provide local mappings (which can override data fetched from VOMS). You should have the following entries:

    container.security.attributes.order=VOMS-PULL XUUDB
    container.security.attributes.combiningPolicy=MERGE_LAST_OVERRIDES
    # ... here goes xuudb configuration
    
    container.security.attributes.VOMS-PULL.class=eu.unicore.uas.security.vo.SAMLPushAuthoriser
  4. Configure vo.config file as below:

    vo.group=/voms.vo.name
    
    #this file must contain the VOMS service certificate
    vo.truststore.type=directory
    vo.truststore.directoryLocations.1=/opt/unicore/vo-certificates/*.pem
    
    vo.localServerURI=http://example.org:7777
    
    vo.pull.enable=false
    vo.push.enable=true
    
    # Mapping of VOMS attributes (right side) to the special, recognized by UNICORE
    #  incarnation attributes (left)
    vo.unicoreAttribute.role=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/role
    vo.unicoreAttribute.role.default=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/role/primary
    vo.unicoreAttribute.virtualOrganisations=http://dci-sec.org/saml/attribute/group
    
    # The rest of UNICORE incarnation attributes won't be provided by VOMS out of the box,
    # but you can define in VOMS generic attributes, and use them. Note that VOMS generic
    # attributes are always global, i.e. valid in all groups.
    vo.unicoreAttribute.xlogin=someVomsGenericAttribute1
    
    #vo.unicoreAttribute.group=
    #vo.unicoreAttribute.supplementaryGroups=
    #vo.unicoreAttribute.addDefaultGroups=
    #vo.unicoreAttribute.queue=

At this moment your users should be able to push assertions to your site obtained from VOMS service. Of course the VOMS service must have its SAML endpoint enabled.

18. Proxy certificate support

Note

First, a warning: proxies are not really supported in UNICORE, except for a very limited set of usage scenarios. Many "normal" things will not work with proxy certificates. Thus, only use this feature if really strictly necessary. No feature in UNICORE requires proxies

Proxies are supported in two ways in UNICORE

  • transport-layer security and authentication via the UNICORE gateway

  • enable usage of GSI based software such as GridFTP

This document provides information and configuration snippets for the second usage scenario. Information about the first case can be found on the SourceForge Wiki page EnableProxySupport.

18.1. TLS proxy support

Using proxies for TLS means that the proxy certificate is used by the client to establish the SSL connection. You must use a gateway with the appropriate configuration for this to work. On the UNICORE/X side it is necessary to set a property in uas.config :

uas.authoriser.proxysupport=true

18.2. GSI tools support

Your UNICORE client needs to create and send the proxy. Both UCC and URC support this, please consult your client documentation for the details.

18.2.1. Storing the proxy in the job directory

First, you need to enable a handler on the web services engine. In the unicorex/conf/wsrflite.xml, add a handler definition on the target system service:

  <service name="TargetSystemService" wsrf="true" persistent="true">
   ...
   <!-- additional proxy extraction handler definition -->
   <handler type="in" class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.security.ProxyCertInHandler"/>
  </service>

The handler can also be added for all services like this:

  <!-- add proxy extract handler on all services.
       This needs to be done *before* the service definitions -->
  <globalHandler type="in" class="de.fzj.unicore.uas.security.ProxyCertInHandler"/>

  <service name="...">
  </service>

  ...

Secondly, you need to modify the XNJS configuration to enable a component that stores the proxy in the format expected by GSI (no encryption, PEM format).

So open the XNJS config file (e.g. conf/xnjs.xml) and edit the ProcessingChain section.

    <eng:ProcessingChain actionType="JSDL" jobDescriptionType="{http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl}JobDefinition">
    <!-- stores proxy to uspace -->
    <eng:Processor>de.fzj.unicore.uas.xnjs.ProxyCertToUspaceProcessor</eng:Processor>
    <!-- usual entries -->
    <eng:Processor>de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.jsdl.JSDLProcessor</eng:Processor>
    <eng:Processor>de.fzj.unicore.xnjs.ems.processors.UsageLogger</eng:Processor>
  </eng:ProcessingChain>

18.2.2. Configuring gridftp

Using GridFTP basically works out of the box, if the client sends a proxy and you have Globus installed on your TSI login node. However it can be customised using two settings in the XNJS config file ("xnjs.xml" or "xnjs_legacy.xml").

    <!-- name / path of the executable -->
    <eng:Property name="XNJS.staging.gridftp" value="/usr/local/bin/globus-url-copy"/>
    <!-- additional parameters for globus-url-copy -->
    <eng:Property name="XNJS.staging.gridftpParameters" value=""/>

19. XtreemFS support

XtreemFS is a distributed filesystem (see http://www.xtreemfs.org).

XtreemFS can be mounted locally at more than one UNICORE site, making it desirable to have an optimized way of moving files used in UNICORE jobs into and out of XtreemFS.

To achieve this, UNICORE supports a special URL scheme "xtreemfs://" for data staging (i.e. moving data into the job directory prior to execution, and moveing data out of the job directory after execution).

As an example, in their jobs users can write (using a UCC example):

{

  Imports:
  [
   { From: "xtreemfs://CN=test/test.txt", To: "infile", },
  ]

}

to have a file staged in from XtreemFS.

19.1. Site setup

At a site that wishes to support XtreemFS, two ways of providing access are possible. If XtreemFS is mounted locally and accessible to the UNICORE TSI, it is required to define the mount point in CONF/uas.config :

 coreServices.xtreemfs.mountpoint=...

In this case, data will simply be copied by the TSI.

If XtreemFS is not mounted locally, it is possible to define the URL of a UNICORE Storage which provides access to XtreemFS

  coreServices.xtreemfs.url=https://...

In this case, data will be moved using the usual UNICORE file transfer mechanism.

20. The Application service (GridBean service)

The Application service (aka GridBean service) provides application specific plugins for the UNICORE Rich client (URC). On the server side, it is good practice to provide such an Application plugin for every configured application whenever applicable.

The availability of the service is advertised through the Registry, if an appropriate "onstartup" setting is used:

container.onstartup.11=com.intel.gpe.gridbeans.PublishGridBeanService

A second property allows to set the directory where GridBean *.jar files are located on the server. These files will be served by the GridBean service.

#
# GridBeanService: directory on the UNICORE/X machine where the
# server looks for gridbeans
#
coreServices.gridbean.directory=/usr/local/unicore/gridbeans

Only files ending with ".jar" will be served, it is customary to use the suffix "GridBean.jar"

21. Cloud storages support (S3, Swift, CDMI)

UNICORE/X can use an S3, Swift or CDMI storages as backend. These storages can be configured both as a normal storage (shared or attached to target systems) and as storage backend for the StorageFactory service (see also [ux_storages])

21.1. Basic configuration

Configuring a cloud storage as a shared storage works exactly as described in [ux_storages], you just have to make sure to use the required properties.

The following sections list the required properties for all of the supported cloud storages. Note that the prefix depends on what type of storage (shared, dynamic, TSS, job working directory) is being configured.

21.1.1. S3

<prefix>.type=CUSTOM
<prefix>.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3StorageImpl
<prefix>.infoProviderClass=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3InfoProvider

# provider is "s3" or "aws-s3"
<prefix>.settings.provider=s3

# http(s) URL of the S3 storage
<prefix>.settings.endpoint=...

# authentication keys
<prefix>.settings.accessKey=...
<prefix>.settings.secretKey=...

# may the user set the endpoint (default: false)
<prefix>.settings.allowUserDefinedEndpoint=false

21.1.2. Swift

<prefix>.type=CUSTOM
<prefix>.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.swift.SwiftStorageImpl
<prefix>.infoProviderClass=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.swift.SwiftInfoProvider

# http(s) URL of the Swift storage
<prefix>.settings.endpoint=...

# authentication username/password
<prefix>.settings.username=...
<prefix>.settings.password=...

# allow the user to set the endpoint
<prefix>.settings.allowUserDefinedEndpoint=true

21.1.3. CDMI

<prefix>.type=CUSTOM
<prefix>.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.cdmi.CDMIStorageImpl
<prefix>.infoProviderClass=de.fzj.unicore.uas.cdmi.CDMIInfoProvider

# http(s) URL of the CDMI storage
<prefix>.settings.endpoint=...

# authentication username/password
<prefix>.settings.username=...
<prefix>.settings.password=...

# Openstack Keystone token endpoint
# if not set, HTTP basic authentication will be used
<prefix>.settings.tokenEndpoint=...

# allow the user to set the endpoint
<prefix>.settings.allowUserDefinedEndpoint=true

Compare the examples below! The authentication keys can be handled flexibly, as detailed in the next section.

21.2. Authentication credentials

There are several ways to configure the required credentials for authenticating the user to the cloud store. Two of them are done server-side (i.e. by the UNICORE administrator) and the third uses the credentias provided by the user.

UNICORE/X looks for credentials in the following order

  • credentials provided by the user

  • per-user credentials provided via UNICORE’s attribute sources

  • fixed credentials provided in the server config

It is always possible for the user to pass in credentials when creating the storage using the StorageFactory service. Of course this mechanism does not apply when using a cloud store for a different type of storage service.

The second option (using attribute sources) allows to configure per-user credentials, but managing everything server-side, so the user has a nice single-sign-on experience when using UNICORE.

If you use the map file attribute source, an example entry looks like this:

  <entry key="CN=Demo User,O=UNICORE,C=EU">

     <!-- standard UNICORE attributes -->

     <attribute name="role">
        <value>user</value>
     </attribute>
     <attribute name="xlogin">
        <value>somebody</value>
     </attribute>
     <attribute name="group">
        <value>users</value>
     </attribute>

      <!-- S3 specific attributes -->

      <attribute name="s3.accessKey">
         <value> ... access key data omitted ... </value>
      </attribute>
      <attribute name="s3.secretKey">
         <value> ... secret key data omitted ... </value>
      </attribute>

   </entry>

Last not least, the keys can also be hardcoded into the config, using the accessKey and secretKey properties.

# authentication keys
<prefix>.settings.accessKey=...
<prefix>.settings.secretKey=...

21.3. Examples

21.3.1. Dynamic storage using the StorageFactory

If configured as a dynamic storage, a new directory will be created corresponding to each storage.

In the following example we configure S3 in addition to the "DEFAULT" storage type.

#
# Available storage types
#
coreServices.sms.factory.storagetypes=DEFAULT S3

#
# NOTE
#
# the configuration for the "DEFAULT" storage type
# is OMITTED in this example!
#

#
# S3 storage configuration
#
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.description=S3 interface
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3StorageImpl
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.infoProviderClass=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3InfoProvider
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.path=/dynamic-storages
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.cleanup=false
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.protocols=BFT

#
# the next four settings depend on your S3 backend
#

# provider is "s3" or "aws-s3"
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.settings.provider=s3
# endpoint of the S3
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.settings.endpoint=...
# OPTIONAL access key and secret key
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.settings.accessKey=...
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.settings.secretKey=...

# optional: may user overwrite endpoint and provider?
# this defaults to 'false'!
coreServices.sms.factory.S3.settings.allowUserdefinedEndpoint=true

21.3.2. Shared storage

# add 'S3' to the list of enabled shares
coreServices.sms.share.enabledShares=S3 ...

# S3 configuration
coreServices.sms.share.S3.description=S3 interface
coreServices.sms.share.S3.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.sms.share.S3.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3StorageImpl
coreServices.sms.share.S3.infoProviderClass=de.fzj.unicore.uas.jclouds.s3.S3InfoProvider
coreServices.sms.share.S3.path=/
coreServices.sms.share.S3.protocols=BFT

coreServices.sms.share.S3.settings.provider=s3
coreServices.sms.share.S3.settings.endpoint=...
coreServices.sms.share.S3.settings.accessKey=...
coreServices.sms.share.S3.settings.secretKey=...

Configuring as a TSS storage works accordingly.

22. Apache Hadoop support

UNICORE can use the following Hadoop features:

  • Hadoop’s distributed file system HDFS be used as a storage back-end.

  • the YARN job manager can be used to submit jobs to Hadoop

The Hadoop Java APIs are used for this, and no additional components need to be installed on the Hadoop cluster. The required ports for accessing the HDFS name and data nodes and YARN need to be accessible to UNICORE/X.

22.1. Configuration overview

The directory containing the Hadoop config files needs to be configured in uas.config:

coreServices.hadoop.configDir=/etc/unicore/unicorex/hadoop

XML files in this directory will be used to configure the Hadoop client API. The core-site.xml, hdfs-site.xml and yarn-site.xml files of your Hadoop installation can be used.

22.2. Storage (HDFS) support

22.2.1. Basic properties for enabling HDFS

Please refer to [ux_storages]) for the different ways to define storages.

For a given storage, sett the type parameter to CUSTOM and the class to the Hadoop implmentation like so:

<prefix>.type=CUSTOM
<prefix>.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.SMSHadoopImpl

22.2.2. Enabling HDFS delegation

To access HDFS as the actual user (instead of as the "unicore" user), you need to allow the "unicore" user to impersonate the actual user. This is achieved modifying the core-site.xml config file on the Hadoop HDFS NameNode. Set

<property>
   <name>hadoop.proxyuser.unicore.hosts</name>
   <value>*</value>
</property>
<property>
   <name>hadoop.proxyuser.unicore.groups</name>
   <value>*</value>
</property>

and restart HDFS.

If your UNICORE/X server is running under a different user ID, substitute this user ID for "unicore" in the above snippet.

You may also switch OFF delegation, causing all file access to happen as the "unicore" user. To do this, set in the UNICORE/X uas.config file

# disable Hadoop's delegation mechanism for HDFS access
coreServices.hadoop.useDelegation=false

22.3. Compute support (YARN)

To configure UNICORE to submit jobs to the Hadoop resource manager YARN takes some changes in the XNJS config file (xnjs.xml).

In uas.config, check that xnjs.xml is used:

# uas.config

coreServices.targetsystemfactory.xnjs.configfile=/etc/unicore/unicorex/xnjs.xml

and that the job working directory storage service is setup to be HDFS:

#########################################################################
################### Job working directories configuration ###############
#########################################################################
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.type=CUSTOM
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.class=de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.SMSHadoopImpl
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.defaultUmask=0
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.disableTrigger=true
coreServices.sms.jobDirectories.disableMetadata=true

The xnjs.xml needs the following settings for YARN to be used.

In the top Core section, edit the Execution component:

 <!-- Use Hadoop/Yarn -->
 <eng:Execution>de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.tsi.HadoopExecution</eng:Execution>

and in the properties section, edit the XNJS.tsiclass and XNJS.filespace values:

 <!-- properties -->
   <eng:Properties>
      <!-- use the Hadoop TSI -->
      <eng:Property name="XNJS.tsiclass" value="de.fzj.unicore.uas.hadoop.tsi.HadoopTSI"/>
      <!-- base directory for job working directories (absolute path on HDFS) -->
      <eng:Property name="XNJS.filespace" value="/user/unicore/FILESPACE"/>
   </eng:Properties>

Note that the job working directories are on HDFS, so specify an appropriate HDFS path here.

22.4. Application definitions (IDB)

To simplify the end-user’s life, some applications can be defined in the IDB. This section gives a few examples including some hints on how to define and run jobs.

22.5. Running a generic Java application

The "normal" Hadoop use case is that the application runs on data from HDFS, and the application code (in this case a jar file) has to be available on the YARN master node. When using UNICORE, the application code will generally be also on the HDFS, since that is what UNICORE has access to. UNICORE sets up Hadoop to automatically move the application code to the YARN master node.

The generic execution of a Java application on Hadoop can be defined in the IDB like so:

<!-- RunJar: run a Java application -->
<idb:IDBApplication>
  <idb:ApplicationName>RunJar</idb:ApplicationName>
  <idb:ApplicationVersion>2.6.0</idb:ApplicationVersion>
  <jsdl:POSIXApplication xmlns:jsdl="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix">
    <!-- FULL path to the 'java' executable -->
    <jsdl:Executable>/usr/lib/jvm/java/bin/java</jsdl:Executable>
    <jsdl:Argument>org.apache.hadoop.util.RunJar</jsdl:Argument>
    <jsdl:Argument Type="filename"
                   Description="Java archive containing the executable code.">$JARFILE?</jsdl:Argument>
    <jsdl:Argument Description="Java class to execute.">$MAINCLASS?</jsdl:Argument>
    <jsdl:Argument>$ARGUMENTS?</jsdl:Argument>

    <!-- Java application classpath on the worker node -->
    <jsdl:Environment name="CLASSPATH">/usr/lib/hadoop-yarn/*:/usr/lib/hadoop-mapreduce/*:/usr/lib/hadoop-hdfs/*:/usr/lib/hadoop/*:/usr/lib/hadoop/lib/*</jsdl:Environment>
  </jsdl:POSIXApplication>
</idb:IDBApplication>

As an example job consider the following UCC job specification:

{ ApplicationName: "RunJar",

Parameters: {
 JARFILE: "${HDFS}${USPACE}/wordcount.jar",
 MAINCLASS: "wordcount.WordCount",
},

Arguments: ["${HDFS}/user/unicore/input/",
      "${HDFS}${USPACE}/output",
],

Imports: [
  { From: "wordcount.jar",
   To: "wordcount.jar" }
],

}

This uses the standard Hadoop example "wordcount". The application code (the wordcount.jar file) is uploaded from the user’s local machine into the job working directory.

Note that in the application arguments, the variables HDFS and USPACE are used. UNICORE will automatically replace these with the correct values.

Contact us if you have any suggestions for other types of Hadoop applications!