Installing the Portal

The instructions for installing the OGCE Grid portlets and plugins into GridSphere are given in the navigation link, Installing the Portal. In short, unpack the download and run ./install.sh. To capture the output of the build process, run 


./install.sh > install.log 2>&1

When installation has completed, the install.sh script will start the portal's Tomcat server on port 8080 and the GridPort Web services' Tomcat server on port 7070. Releases prior to 2.0.1 use port 9090. These servers are under $ogce_home/portal_deploy/ and $ogce_home/services_gridport_deploy, respectively. It is often useful to follow each Tomcat's catalina.log file: 

[shell-prompt1> cd $ogce_home
[shell-prompt1> tail -f ./portal_deploy/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/logs/catalina.out

(and in a separate terminal window)

[shell-prompt2> cd $ogce_home
[shell-prompt2> tail -f ./services_gridport_deploy/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/logs/catalina.out
If you have problems, this is usually the best place to start looking for the causes.

Note the $ogce_home variable is used here as shorthand. It is the base directory of the OGCE download.

Common Problems

Fedore Core versions of Linux ship with a problem-causing version of Apache Ant. This will result in errors such as the following in the build process, and the GridSphere container will not be built properly. Check to see if your OS has the file /etc/ant.conf. If so, remove it or edit it as necessary. 

Installing GridSphere...
Unknown argument: -cp
ant [options] [target [target2 [target3] ...]]
...
The result of this error is that GridSphere will not be built. You can check this by 
[shell-prompt> ls -l /path/to/ogce/home/portal_deploy/apache-tomcat/5.5.12/webapps/gridsphere
Solution: rename, delete, or edit /etc/ant.conf.

Logging In and Getting Started

GridSphere comes with the default "root" account. No password is required for initial login. For more information on configuring accounts and managing your GridSphere portal, see the GridSphere Project Documentation page.

Getting a Grid Credential

None of the Grid portlets will be active until you acquire a credential from a MyProxy server. You must obtain a Grid user certificate for your Grid installation and store it in a MyProxy server using a command similar to the following: 

[shell-prompt> myproxy-init -l username -s proxyserver.host.name
This will store a credential for you for one week, by default. After you have stored your credential in MyProxy, you may retreive short-term (2 hour) proxy credentials in the portal. Click the "Proxy Manager" tab to see a veiw similar to the one shown at the end of the previous section.

Click "Get New Proxy" to get the view similar to the screen below. Fill out the form to fetch a credential.

After you have successfully fetched a credential, the JobSubmit/GRAM and GridFTP portlets will become active. Click the "Reload" buttons on these if necessary to get them into an active state.

Running Remote Commands

The Job Submission portlet allows you to run simple remote commands and track their status. This portlet is intended to illustrate basic Grid tasks. After you have obtained a credential and activated the Job Submit portlet, you can fill out the form to submit basic commands. Click the "Check Status" button to get the command's standard output, or redirect it to a file on the specified host.

Common Problems

Interactive job submission requires that you run the portal on a machine with a real IP address and that your $HOME/.globus/cog.properties file is configured correctly.

  • Verify that your host server has a real IP address. Try for example using the Unix ifconfig command and check your inet address.
  • In the account where you install the portal, check your $HOME/.globus/cog.properties. It should look something like this: 
    [shell-prompt> more $HOME/.globus/cog.properties
cacert=/your/home/.globus/certificates
ip=123.456.789
    The value of the IP property should be the value you see in your ifconfig "inet addr" field.

If you are using a wireless connection, try using a Virtual Private Network connection.

Using GridFTP Portlets

The GridFTP portlets will also become active after you have obtained a credential. Use "Reload" if necessary to activate the portlet. When active, you will be prompted to give the names of either one or two GridFTP servers. The two-host view allows you to display files side-by-side. After you have selected the desired host(s), you will be able to browse remote files and upload/download files.

.

Common Problems

GridFTP's download feature is implemented using servlet-portlet intercommunication. This unfortunately exposes a Tomcat bug. See http://nagoya.apache.org/jira/browse/PLUTO-53 for details.

A simple workaround exists, and is described here . The OGCE2 2.0 installation automatically applies this patch to the portal server, but you may (if you ever rebuild things by hand) need to make this correction.

In summary, you need to modify Tomcat's server.xml (located in the conf directory) to add the attribute emptySessionPath="true" to the non-SSL HTTP/1.1 descriptor: 


    <Connector port="8080"
               maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
               enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
               connectionTimeout="20000" disableUploadTimeout="true" emptySessionPath="true" />
Tomcat seems to be very picky about newlines in this file. We have usually found it best to put the emptySessionPath attribute on the same line as the disableUploadTimeout attribute.

Setting Up GPIR

The GPIR portlet by default points to GPIR Web Services installed under $ogce_home/services_gridport_deploy/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/webapps/gpir. More information on configuring GPIR services is available here.

The GPIR browser portlet is described here. By default, this portlet points to dummy resources and values. A configured GPIR browser and services will give output similar to the screen shot below.

Common Problems

GPIR portlets by default point to GPIR services running at http://localhost:7070/gpir/webservices. If the GPIR web service's Tomcat host is not running, you will get the error message

Error Contacting Web Service.

in the portlet. To fix, restart the GridPort services with the gp-tomcat-start.sh script and follow the logs in services_gridport_deploy/apache-tomcat-5.5.12/logs/catalina.out. Also point your browser to http://localhost:7070/gpir/webservices to make sure that these are deployed correctly.

Miscellaneous Topics

Getting Grid Software

To obtain Globus Toolkit and related software, visit the NMI Grids Center.

Note on MyProxy Server Versions

Please use the latest version of MyProxy (0.6.4 or later) to avoid a bug with proxy credential retrieval. If you must use an earlier version of MyProxy, please use the Java CoG Kit's MyProxy init command line tools to store your credential. For more information, please see the MyProxy section of the OGCE FAQ.