[glue-wg] about definition (Re: TmpDir, ScratchDir and DataDir)

[Sergio Andreozzi]

Hi JP,

can you refine these definitions? And also, please, try to make clear 
the differences between these 3 directories (do we need all of them?)

TmpDir: The absolute path of a temporary directory shared across 
execution environment instances (i.e., worker nodes). This directory 
must be available to programs using the normal file access primitives 
(open/read/write/close) and may be used as shared space by programs 
running on multiple hosts (e.g. MPI)

ScratchDir: The absolute path for a shared directory available for 
application data. Typically a POSIX accessible transient disk space 
shared between the execution environment instances. It may be used by 
MPI applications or to store intermediate files that need further 
processing by local jobs or as staging area, specially if the execution 
environment instances have no internet connectivity

DataDir: ...


Cheers, Sergio


JP Navarro wrote:
> Sergio,
> 
> I disagree. A remote user wanting to submit and run a job has to know
> something about the execution environment in order to even be able to
> use TmpDir, ScratchDir, and DataDir.  First, even if they send a probe
> job to discover those paths, what will the job look at to discover these
> directories?  Some environment variable that points to these directories,
> or something else? What environment variable does it look it? Are we
> implying some other environment variable standard so that it can discover
> these paths?
> 
> BTW, we have talked about standard execution environment variables, which
> I think is a good thing, but I believe GLUE should be flexible enough to
> allow remove users to discover these paths even when standard variables
> aren't there. I don't see a reason to tie GLUE to standard environments.
> 
> The TeraGrid users standard environment variables, AND we're going to
> publish the paths those variables point to thru information services so
> that users can construct jobs that use these paths (without launching
> probe jobs).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> JP
> 
> 
> On May 8, 2008, at 9:17 AM, Sergio Andreozzi wrote:
> 
>> Hi JP and Gerson,
>>
>> during this call
>> http://forge.ogf.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.glue-wg/wiki/PhoneMeeting20080429_11 
>>
>>
>> we agreed that the attributes TmpDir, ScratchDir and DataDir part of 
>> the Computing Resource (e.g., a batch system) should be removed:
>>
>> http://forge.ogf.org/sf/sfmain/do/go/artf6196
>>
>> the values can be discovered by the job in the worker node environment.
>>
>> Do you confirm that this is ok with you?
>>
>> Cheers, Sergio
>>
>> -- 
>> Sergio Andreozzi
>> INFN-CNAF,                    Tel: +39 051 609 2860
>> Viale Berti Pichat, 6/2       Fax: +39 051 609 2746
>> 40126 Bologna (Italy)         Web: http://www.cnaf.infn.it/~andreozzi
> 


-- 
Sergio Andreozzi
INFN-CNAF,                    Tel: +39 051 609 2860
Viale Berti Pichat, 6/2       Fax: +39 051 609 2746
40126 Bologna (Italy)         Web: http://www.cnaf.infn.it/~andreozzi