FTS procedures for 2.0: services XML cache tool

To build the services.xml cache file, you should use the glite-sd2cache tool.

The current released version of this tool is glite-sd2cache-1.0.2-1. It was first introduced in:

http://glite.web.cern.ch/glite/packages/R3.0/deployment/glite-FTA_oracle/3.0.16-0/glite-FTA_oracle-3.0.16-0-update.html

Why / What?

This file /opt/glite/etc/services.xml is deployed on the FTA agent machines and is used as a local cache of the BDII GlueService record information for the SRM hosts in WLCG. We cache it because the BDII system still has to separate static information from dynamic information - i.e. if a site goes down for maintenance, its record can disappear, which is undesirable for the FTS.

The tool creates a sticky cache - new and existing entries are overwritten in the file from the information in BDII, old entries are kept in the file.

How do I configure it?

Ensure you set the following values in the site-info.def file:

BDII_HOST  FTS_HOST_ALIAS PX_HOST GLITE_LOCATION

Set:

BDII_HOST: should be set to a top level BDII. e.g. lcg-bdii.cern.ch:2170

FTS_HOST_ALIAS: should be set to the hostname (or load-balanced DNS alias) of your web-service. This will configure the glite client tools on the local machine to point to it.

PX_HOST: the MyProxy host to be used for proxy renewal (future config). This is the same MyProxy used by the WMS, NOT the '!FTS MyProxy'.

GLITE_LOCATION: the standard g'lite location: /opt/glite

You should use YAIM 4 with the config_sd2cache function.

It is run automatically in YAIM 4 for the FTA2 target which configures the agents and for the FTM target which configures the FTS monitoring node.

After YAIM configuration, see the section on the 'Initial run of the tool'.

Configure by hand

Edit the file:

/opt/glite/etc/glite-sd2cache-cron.conf

Edit the first three items (FTS_HOST, MYPROXY_HOST, LCG_GFAL_INFOSYS). It is recommended to leave the others at their default values.

# Configuration file for glite-sd2cache

# FTS_HOST
FTS_HOST="pilot-fts-ws.cern.ch"

# MYPROXY_HOST
MYPROXY_HOST="myproxy.cern.ch"

# Loction of top level BDII
LCG_GFAL_INFOSYS="lcg-bdii.cern.ch:2170"

# Location of outputed services.xml file.
#CACHE_FILE=/opt/glite/etc/services.xml

# Location of previous services.xml file, set to override this default.
#CACHE_OLD=/opt/glite/var/cache/glite-sd2cache

# Age in days at which to delete old services.xml files, set to override this default
#CACHE_AGE=60

#Location of log files, set to overide this default
#CACHE_LOG=/var/log/glite/glite-sd2cache.log

Start the 'service' which enables the cron job.

service glite-sd2cache start

Chkconfig it on:

chkconfig --add glite-sd2cache chkconfig --level 345 glite-sd2cache on

See the section on the 'initial run of the tool'.

What's running where?

The YAIM configuration will rewrite the default config file:

/opt/glite/etc/glite-sd2cache-cron.conf

with your values. The tool is a script which is run from cron daily using:

/etc/cron.daily/glite-sd2cache-cron

The cron job itself is enabled and disabled using a SysV script:

service glite-sd2cache start | stop | status

The YAIM configuration 'starts' this tool and chkconfig it on.

Initial run of the tool

It is recommended to delete (and backup!) your existing /opt/glite/etc/services.xml file.

The run manually the tool for the first time:

. /etc/cron.hourly/glite-sd2cache-cron

this will scan the BDII and fill the services.xml file initially.

You should check the MyProxy entries near the top of the file. Make sure the hosts are correct. The legacy MyProxy mode of FTS uses the entry with FtsMode 'retriever'

Period

The cron runs daily.

If necessary, it could be moved to hourly (move it to /etc/cron.hourly), but this creates a greater load on the top-level BDII servers.