CONDOR_CONFIGURE(1)

📦
version 25.12.2 · 6 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ condor_configure ✨

okay bestie, so this is HTCondor's install-and-configure situation, straight out of the HTCondor Manual 💖 (that's the manual name, in case you were wondering whose manual this is)

🌸 NAME 🌸

condor_configure — Configure or install HTCondor 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

condor_configure or condor_install [--help] [--usage]

condor_configure or condor_install [--install[=<path/to/release>]]
[--install-dir=<path>] [--prefix=<path>] [--local-dir=<path>]
[--make-personal-condor] [--bosco] [--type = < submit, execute, manager
>] [--central-manager = < hostname>] [--owner = < ownername >]
[--maybe-daemon-owner] [--install-log = < file >] [--overwrite]
[--ignore-missing-libs] [--force] [--no-env-scripts] [--env-scripts-dir
= < directory >] [--backup] [--credd] [--verbose]

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

okay so here's the tea: condor_configure and condor_install are literally the same script 🫶. One script, two names, it installs and/or configures HTCondor on Unix machines. And like, the names are doing exactly what they say on the tin: condor_install is the one meant to perform an HTCondor installation, and condor_configure is the one meant to configure (or reconfigure) an existing installation. Both of them will run with Perl 5.6.0 or more recent versions, no cap.

condor_configure (and yes, condor_install too) are designed to be run more than one time where required 🔁. It can install HTCondor when you invoke it with a correct configuration, like this:

$ condor_install

or like this:

$ condor_configure --install

or, it can change the configuration files when you invoke it like:

$ condor_configure
⚠️ bestie, important: changes in the configuration files do not result in changes while HTCondor is running. If you want your changes to actually land while HTCondor is up, you gotta go further and use the condor_reconfig or condor_restart command. condor_reconfig is required where the currently executing daemons need to be informed of configuration changes. condor_restart is required where the options --make-personal-condor or --type are used, since these affect which daemons are running. 😭

Running condor_configure or condor_install with no options results in a usage screen being printed 📜. The --help option can be used to display a full help screen.

Within the options given below, the phrase release directories is the list of directories that are released with HTCondor. This list includes: bin, etc, examples, include, lib, libexec, man, sbin, sql and src. 🍓

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -help — Print help screen and exit ✨
  • -usage — Print short usage and exit
  • -install[=<path/to/release>] — Perform installation, assuming that the current working directory contains the release directory, if the optional =<path/to/release> is not specified. Without further options, the configuration is that of a Personal HTCondor, a complete one-machine pool 💖. If used as an upgrade within an existing installation directory, existing configuration files and local directory are preserved. This is the default behavior of condor_install.
  • -install-dir=<path> — Specifies the path where HTCondor should be installed or the path where it already is installed. The default is the current working directory 📁.
  • -prefix=<path> — This is an alias for -install-dir. twin behavior, twin flag 💫
  • -local-dir=<path> — Specifies the location of the local directory, which is the directory that generally contains the local (machine-specific) configuration file as well as the directories where HTCondor daemons write their run-time information (spool, log, execute). This location is indicated by the LOCAL_DIR variable in the configuration file. When installing (that is, if -install is specified), condor_configure will properly create the local directory in the location specified. If none is specified, the default value is given by the evaluation of $(RELEASE_DIR)/local.$(HOSTNAME).

During subsequent invocations of condor_configure (that is, without the -install option), if the -local-dir option is specified, the new directory will be created and the log, spool and execute directories will be moved there from their current location. 🚚

  • -make-personal-condor — Installs and configures for Personal HTCondor, a fully-functional, one-machine pool. main character energy fr 👑
  • -bosco — Installs and configures Bosco, a personal HTCondor that submits jobs to remote batch systems 🌈
  • -type= < submit, execute, manager > — One or more of the types may be listed. This determines the roles that a machine may play in a pool. In general, any machine can be a submit and/or execute machine, and there is one central manager per pool. In the case of a Personal HTCondor, the machine fulfills all three of these roles. iconique.
  • -central-manager=<hostname> — Instructs the current HTCondor installation to use the specified machine as the central manager. This modifies the configuration variable COLLECTOR_HOST to point to the given host name 🎯. The central manager machine's HTCondor configuration needs to be independently configured to act as a manager using the option -type=manager.
  • -owner=<ownername> — Set configuration such that HTCondor daemons will be executed as the given owner. This modifies the ownership on the log, spool and execute directories and sets the CONDOR_IDS value in the configuration file, to ensure that HTCondor daemons start up as the specified effective user 💜. The section on security within the HTCondor manual discusses UIDs in HTCondor. This is only applicable when condor_configure is run by root. If not run as root, the owner is the user running the condor_configure command.
  • -maybe-daemon-owner — If -owner is not specified and no appropriate user can be found to run Condor, then this option will allow the daemon user to be selected. This option is rarely needed by users but can be useful for scripts that invoke condor_configure to install Condor 🤖.
  • -install-log=<file> — Save information about the installation in the specified file 📝. This is normally only needed when condor_configure is called by a higher-level script, not when invoked by a person.
  • -overwrite — Always overwrite the contents of the sbin directory in the installation directory. By default, condor_install will not install if it finds an existing sbin directory with HTCondor programs in it 😤. In this case, condor_install will exit with an error message. Specify -overwrite or -backup to tell condor_install what to do.

This prevents condor_install from moving an sbin directory out of the way that it should not move. This is particularly useful when trying to install HTCondor in a location used by other things (/usr, /usr/local, etc.) For example: condor_install -prefix=/usr will not move /usr/sbin out of the way unless you specify the -backup option.

The -backup behavior is used to prevent condor_install from overwriting running daemons — Unix semantics will keep the existing binaries running, even if they have been moved to a new directory 💀.

  • -backup — Always backup the sbin directory in the installation directory. By default, condor_install will not install if it finds an existing sbin directory with HTCondor programs in it. In this case, condor_install with exit with an error message 😭. You must specify -overwrite or -backup to tell condor_install what to do.

This prevents condor_install from moving an sbin directory out of the way that it should not move. This is particularly useful if you're trying to install HTCondor in a location used by other things (/usr, /usr/local, etc.) For example: condor_install -prefix=/usr will not move /usr/sbin out of the way unless you specify the -backup option.

The -backup behavior is used to prevent condor_install from overwriting running daemons — Unix semantics will keep the existing binaries running, even if they have been moved to a new directory 💀.

  • -ignore-missing-libs — Ignore missing shared libraries that are detected by condor_install. By default, condor_install will detect missing shared libraries such as libstdc++.so.5 on Linux 🐧; it will print messages and exit if missing libraries are detected. The -ignore-missing-libs will cause condor_install to not exit, and to proceed with the installation if missing libraries are detected. living dangerously, love that for you.
  • -force — This is equivalent to enabling both the -overwrite and -ignore-missing-libs command line options. combo move ✨
  • -no-env-scripts — By default, condor_configure writes simple sh and csh shell scripts which can be sourced by their respective shells to set the user's PATH and CONDOR_CONFIG environment variables. This option prevents condor_configure from generating these scripts 🙈.
  • -env-scripts-dir=<directory> — By default, the simple sh and csh shell scripts (see -no-env-scripts for details) are created in the root directory of the HTCondor installation. This option causes condor_configure to generate these scripts in the specified directory 📂.
  • -credd — Configure the condor_credd daemon (credential manager daemon) 🔐.
  • -verbose — Print information about changes to configuration variables as they occur 🗣️.

⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

condor_configure will exit with a status value of 0 (zero) upon success 🎉, and it will exit with a nonzero value upon failure 😭.

and that's the first half, bestie — the vibes continue 💫

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

Okay bestie, here's where it gets actually fun, because we're gonna do it for real 💅

Say you wanna install HTCondor on a machine (machine1@cs.wisc.edu) so it becomes the pool's central manager 👑 On machine1, inside the directory that contains the unzipped HTCondor distribution directories, you go:

$ condor_install --type=submit,execute,manager

And that's it — the machine can now submit and execute HTCondor jobs and be the central manager of the pool. Three jobs, one machine, main character energy fr fr ✨

Now what if you want to flip the configuration so that machine2@cs.wisc.edu is an execute-only machine — like a dedicated computing node, no submitting, just vibes — living in a pool whose central manager sits on machine1@cs.wisc.edu? You run this on that machine2@cs.wisc.edu, from inside the directory where HTCondor is installed:

$ condor_configure --central-manager=machine1@cs.wisc.edu --type=execute

Pool's over there, node's over here, they're in love, it's giving long-distance but make it compute 🦋

Wanna change where the LOCAL_DIR directory lives in the configuration file? Same deal — run it from the directory where HTCondor is installed:

$ condor_configure --local-dir=/path/to/new/local/directory

And watch this: this will move the log, spool, and execute directories over to /path/to/new/local/directory from the current local directory. It's not just renaming a variable, bestie, it's physically relocating the whole squad 🚚💖

not me sliding in a gentle reminder: that --local-dir move is doing actual filesystem work on log, spool, and execute, so know what you're pointing it at, mwah 🫶

Author 💜

HTCondor Team

1990-2026, Center for High Throughput Computing, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, US. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

okay that's the whole page, we ate and left absolutely no crumbs 🍓 This beauty is dated Jul 26, 2026 and answers to the name CONDOR_CONFIGURE(1) — go forth and configure, bestie, slay 💅✨

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