Guide to Ganga

Introduction

This is a guide to installing and configuring the Ganga Job Management tool for use with both local batch systems and the DIRAC workload management system. It's maintained by Mark Slater (mws<AT>hep.ph.bh.bham.ac.uk) - please email if you have any comments/problems!

For more info and more in depth user guides, please visit the main Ganga website http://ganga.web.cern.ch/ganga/

Requirements

Before you start using Ganga (assuming you want to use it to submit jobs to the grid rather than just for local batch system submission), there are a few steps you need to go through:

• Go through the Grid User guide (https://www.gridpp.ac.uk/wiki/Grid_user_crash_course) to get a grid certificate and become a member of a VO
• Sign up to the GridPP DIRAC server and install the client (https://www.gridpp.ac.uk/wiki/Quick_Guide_to_Dirac)

Installation and Configuration

Here are the steps to download and configure Ganga:

• Download the install script from the Ganga website and make it executable:

 wget http://ganga.web.cern.ch/ganga/download/ganga-install
 chmod +x ganga-install

• Run the script with the external plugins you want to include to download and install Ganga at ~/Ganga. Generally, this will be the GangaDirac plugin:

 ./ganga-install --extern=GangaDirac LAST

• Now run Ganga with the -g flag to create the default .gangarc file:

 /home/<username>/Ganga/install/<version>/bin/ganga -g -o[Configuration]RUNTIME_PATH=GangaDirac

• To configure Ganga to submit using your DIRAC client installation, setup the DIRAC client and export the environment to a file for Ganga to use:

 source ~/dirac/bashrc
 env > ~/dirac/envfile

• Now edit your .gangarc file and set the following option:

 [Configuration] RUNTIME_PATH = GangaDirac
 [Dirac] DiracEnvFile = /home/<username>/dirac/envfile
 [defaults_GridCommand]info = dirac-proxy-info
 [defaults_GridCommand]init = dirac-proxy-init -g <dirac user group>

• Now setup the DIRAC client (as you should before running Ganga if you want to use it) and then run Ganga. It should ask you to generate a proxy and then leave you at the IPython prompt:

 source ~/dirac/bashrc
 /home/<username>/Ganga/install/<version>/bin/ganga

• To test that all is working, try to submit a basic job to the local machine you're running and then to DIRAC:

  Job().submit()
  Job( backend=Dirac() ).submit()