Note: This version of the VDT (1.1.7) is no longer supported. Feel free to look through the documentation and install it, but we cannot guarantee support for it. The current stable release is 2.0.0.

Installing the VDT

What is in the VDT?

The VDT consists of three pieces, the server, the client, and the SDK. The server contains software you would want on a server: the Globus gatekeeper, Condor, etc. The client contains software you would use to run jobs at a remote Grid site. The SDK contains libraries to develop new software.

If you don't know what to install, we recommend installing all three pieces. It doesn't take very long, and you do not have to use the pieces you don't want to. If you install the server, we strongly recommend also installing the client so you can test your installation.

The exact software in the VDT is described elsewhere.

Why should you install the VDT?

You could install all of the pieces of the VDT individually, and you wouldn't need the VDT. So why should you install the VDT?

The VDT installation does as much of the post-installation configuration for you as it can.
When you install the VDT, it's easy to upgrade to future version of the software.
You can turn to the VDT group for support.

Installation Instructions

Install Pacman:
- Download Pacman This is version 2.098, which is the most recent version tested with VDT 1.1.7. More recent versions of Pacman and additional information about Pacman may be available from the main Pacman web site.
- Unpack Pacman: tar xzf pacman-2.098.tar.gz
- Setup your environment to use pacman:
  cd pacman-2.098
  source setup.csh
  This will set your PATH environment variable to find Pacman.
Prepare to install the VDT:
- It is common to set up a Condor cluster with a condor user, where Condor files are placed. The VDT installation will not do this, because of concerns some VDT users have had about the VDT installation messing with an existing Condor installation. Therefore, condor files are always installed in the condor_home subdirectory of the vdt directory. Should you wish to change this, you can do so after the installation. If you like, you can read about it in the Condor manual.
- Decide where you want to install it. It doesn't matter what you choose. Common choices are /vdt and /opt/vdt. For the examples that follow, we'll assume that you wish to install into /vdt.
- Change into that directory:
  
  cd /vdt
- Decide what user you wish to install as. You can install as any user, but we recommend installing as root. If you install as root, the VDT can automatically set up system configuration for you to make sure that daemons will be running.
  
  If you wish to install as non-root and do the system configuration later, the installation process will create a a post-install directory within the /vdt directory. Within this directory will be instructions for setting up your system that you can give to your system adminstrator, who has root privileges.
Install the VDT:
- If your system is running behind a Web proxy, tell Pacman about it:
  
  pacman -http_proxy:http://someproxy.com:port
  
  Of course, subsitute the name and port number of your proxy.
- Install the VDT Server:
  
  pacman -cache:http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/vdt_117_cache
  pacman -get VDT-Server
  
  You will be asked three questions:
  - Do you want to start a new installation? This is your chance to back out if you are installing in the wrong directory.
  - Do you want to trust the registered cache [VDT]? Feel free to say no, but if you do say no, you won't be able to install the VDT.
  - Do you want to add the registered cache [VDT] to your caches file? Say yes for this as well.
  After you answer the preliminary questions, you will see some output as Pacman fetches the necessary files and installs them one by one. If you are root, you will be asked if you want to set up the Globus daemons and the GDMP daemons (these are separate questions). You are also asked if you want the EDG CRL Update program to run automatically. If you don't wish to do these steps or you aren't root, instructions for setting them up will be placed in /vdt/post-install/README, along with some extra files to help you out.
- Install the VDT Client:
  
  pacman -get VDT-Client
  
  This step is like installing the server, but there is less to install and no questions to answer.
- Install the VDT Software Development Kits:
  
  pacman -get VDT-SDK
  
  Again,this step is like installing the server, but there is less to install and no questions to answer.
See what happened:
- Do an 'ls' command, you should see a bunch of directories with Globus, Condor, and GDMP, and the rest of the software installed.
- Read through /vdt/post-install/README. It will tell you about anything that the VDT installation process was unable to do. Also, the Condor set up is tricky, and VDT installer had to make some guesses about how to configure Condor. You should be able to use a personal Condor or Condor-G with no changes, but if you want to set up a Condor pool, you may need to edit the Condor Configuration. The post-install README will get you started with that process.
- If you let the VDT installer set up the daemons, it edited /etc/services, either /etc/inetd.conf (RedHat 6.2) or /etc/xinetd.d/ (RedHat 7.2), and /etc/rc.d/init.d. Look at the changes, if you wish.
Prepare to run VDT components
Get certificates:
- Before you run the Globus Gatekeeper, GridFTP server and some other server software, you need to request a host certificate.
- Furthermore, if you want to access grid services as a client, you need a user certificate.
- Both user and host certificates can be aquired with the following tools
- First select the CA you would like to request your user/host certificate(s) from:
```
cd vdt/setup
./configure_globus.sh --gsi
```
  this will prompt you to select the CA and choose the base DN for user/host certificates.
- Request the certificate using
```
$VDT_LOCATION/globus/bin/grid-cert-request
```
  Use the --help option for more details.
  Note that different CA's have slightly different versions of grid-cert-request. Depending on your selection in the previous step, the VDT software creates a symlink to the corresponding CA-specific grid-cert-request executable.
  Some CAs may only allow user or only host certificates to be created in this manner.
- Finally, you'll need to set up a Globus Gridmap file: directions for a Globus Gridmap file (These aren't very good directions, we'll write some better ones for VDT users.)
Get more information:
- Globus documentation:
- Condor manual
Install other software
- Pippy:
  pacman -get UTA:pippy
  
  Pippy will publish information about software installed via Pacman to your GRIS. At some point this may be part of the standard VDT installation, but first it needs to undergo some testing by the VDT team. Currently it requires you to be root in order to install.
- LSF and/or PBS GRAM jobmanagers/reporters.
  This assumes that you already have PBS / LSF batch systems installed on your machine
```
pacman -get Globus-PBS-Setup
pacman -get Globus-LSF-Setup
	  
```