Collaboration meeting

Europe/Zurich
Vidyo

Vidyo

# ARGUS Collaboration - 2/12/2015

[Agenda](https://indico.cern.ch/event/465818/)

## General news

Nothing to report

## EL7 and Java8 Support

Andrea: more work done for preparing 1.7 release
* Marco integrated the load test suite: should be usable by other sites even if more work is needed
  * Some basic documentation was added
  * A Docker container to run the load test suite is planned
* Pb identified with TLS between pepd and pdp and fixed
  * Several reasons caused the problem but main one was a change in opensaml initialization in last version
* systemd units added
* PAP: checks added for empty/invalid policies
* All these changes are being pushed to GitHub and merged into the packages

Tamas: (functional) test suite problem reviewed/documented
* Most tests fixed: see mail
  * Changes not yet pushed to GitHub: will be done shortly
* A few tests are in fact empty: just placeholders
* Waiting for the last changes to be pushed to the repo to rerun the tests
  * A few tests failing because of the TLS problem
  * A test failing due to the different hostname used in EL7 in binding hostname on PAP: not clear if the problem is on the service side or the test side... Seems to be the test as the service works.
* Has not looked yet to the load test suite
  * May not have enough HW for doing it: depends if it can run efficiently on VMs
  
IPv6 support: not really tested but no problem expected as Java has a good IPv6 support and as ARGUS is binding to all interfaces/addresses
* Sharing a lot of network code with VOMS Admin that is IPv6 compliant: only know issues are with VOMS that is not using the same code

Toward a new ARGUS release:
* Mainly missing the ARGUS GSI callout package: Andrea not aware of any change, probably just need to rebuild it
  * A client-side component, required for ARGUS: should not prevent a server release
  * Previously maintained by SWITCH: NIKHEF may have already built it in their Koji instance, to be checked...
* Andrea would prefer another site feedback before releasing: new RPM packages are available both for EL6 and EL7
  * CERN ready to do it soon as soon as the last patches have been pushed: an EL7 node is ready for installation

Need to look at documentation update, in particular for configuration
* Would be good to migrate to GitHub Pages at the same time
* Michel will look at it

## Open Issues and New Features

CERN issue
* CMS still reports random failures every day at a low rate
  * Typically a request fails and redoing it a few seconds later it works: no real clue yet
* Server has been much more stable since the NFS configuration change (attribute caching enabled)
* CREAM issue (short server issue causing failures for some time) not seen again: may just be the side effect of a more stable server
  * Andrea: http in threaded mode requires that the connection is released to the pool at the end of each request, must check if properly done by CREAM. See ticket.
* Waiting for testing the new version before going further into the troubleshooting
  * Andrea: a better performing server may put more load on NFS...

Database backend prototype to replace the gridmapdir
* Goal: evaluate if this approach is a good candidate to sustain high request rates
* Implementation based on Redis, an in-memory database
  * Transactional approach, same interface for NFS and Redis backend
  * Still early, need to complete the integration into ARGUS for perf testing: ~2-3 months
* First tests: find the tradeoff between disk persistency accuracy and performance
  * Maarten: may distinguish between creating a new mapping (required not to loose a mapping) and last use time update. But probably not really needed as the amount of information to sync remains small in any case.
* Maarten: CERN may be interested to do early tests with the DB backend as soon as it has completed the migration to EL7
  
  
## AOB

Next meeting: January 22, 2016, 2pm

There are minutes attached to this event. Show them.
    • 1
      General news
      INDIGO recruitment
    • 2
      EL7 and Java8 support
      Development news (Andrea) UMD4 integration status (Vincenzo) Test suite and stress tests (Tamas)
    • 3
      Open issues and new features
      CERN issue status DB backend prototype for pool account allocation
    • 4
      AOB
      Next meeting