CONDOR_MASTER(1)

📦
version 25.14.1 · 12 versions
, in fedora 43

✨ NAME ✨

condor_master — the HTCondor Manual's very own baddie, aka the master HTCondor Daemon 👑

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

condor_master

Like. That's it. That's the whole vibe. No flags required, she just goes. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so bestie, listen. condor_master is the main character of every machine in your pool. Her whole job? Keeping all the rest of the HTCondor daemons alive and thriving. She spawns the other daemons, then periodically checks whether shiny new binaries got installed for any of them. If they did — boom — condor_master restarts the affected daemons. No cap. 🔥

And if any daemon straight up crashes? 😭 She sends e-mail to the HTCondor Administrator of your pool and restarts the daemon. She's literally carrying the whole team on her back, fr fr.

She also supports various administrative commands so you can start, stop, or reconfigure daemons remotely — yes, from a distance, like a true icon. 📡✨

condor_master runs on every machine in your HTCondor pool, no matter what functions each machine is performing. Every. Single. One. She's not picky, she's just committed. 🫶

Also! On Linux platforms, if you start condor_master as root, she will tune (but never decrease) certain kernel parameters that are important to HTCondor's performance. She only ever turns things UP. 📈

🎀 the DAEMON_LIST situation 🎀

The DAEMON_LIST configuration macro is what condor_master uses to get a per-machine list of daemons that should be started and kept running.

Here's the tea ☕:

  • For daemons specified in the DC_DAEMON_LIST configuration macro, condor_master will spawn them automatically appending a -f argument.
  • For those listed in DAEMON_LIST but not in DC_DAEMON_LIST, there will be no -f argument. Nope. Not one. 🙈

🌈 directory creation era 🌈

On start-up, condor_master creates certain directories necessary for her proper functioning — but only if they don't already exist. She's thoughtful like that. 💖

She uses the values of these configuration settings to do it:

  • EXECUTE
  • LOCAL_DIR
  • LOCAL_DISK_LOCK_DIR
  • LOCAL_UNIV_EXECUTE
  • LOCK
  • LOG
  • RUN
  • SEC_CREDENTIAL_DIRECTORY_KRB
  • SEC_CREDENTIAL_DIRECTORY_OAUTH
  • SEC_PASSWORD_DIRECTORY
  • SEC_TOKEN_SYSTEM_DIRECTORY
  • SPOOL

Twelve settings, twelve dirs, one queen. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -n name — gives the condor_master an alternate name, overriding the one that MASTER_NAME (that's the configuration variable, bestie) gives her. It's giving rebrand. ✨

🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

HTCondor Team — love them, obsessed with them, they built the icon herself. 💜

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.

and that's the whole page, bestie. go forth and keep those daemons running. no daemon left behind. 🌸

HTCondor Manual · Oct 16, 2026 · mwah, catch you on the flip side, CONDOR_MASTER(1) out. 🎀😭🔥

📦 where this page comes from