Minutes of NAF User Committee meeting from 10.06.2009 
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Present/Phone: Johan Blouw (LHCb), Wolfgang Ehrenfeld (ATLAS), Andreas
Gellrich (NAF), Andreas Haupt (IT), Carsten Hof (CMS), Yves Kemp (IT),
Niels Meyer (ILC), Hartmut Stadie (CMS)

Excused: Steve Aplin (ILC), Kai Leffhalm (NAF), Jan Erik Sundermann (ATLAS)


1. News from the chair

Nothing to report.


2. Action items:

Only items with updates, see action item list for complete list of
items.

 - Test NAF SL5 setup for software

See discussion after operation report.


 - Feedback to automatic proxy prolongation:

ATLAS: WE tested the script and had two suggestions: The sourcing of
the UI should be put into the ap_gen.sh script, so that the
environment is not contaminated with the full UI setup. The proxy
should be extended quite frequently to ensure a long running time. 72
hours minimum duration would be good. 20 hours (current minimum) is too
short as the proxy is send whiteout any change with jobs to the
Grid. Otherwise feedback positive.

CMS: Some CMS tool needs fixing as it doesn't like the additional
proxy name in the DN string of the proxy.

LHCb: Not tested and not need, as their data should go to the /scratch
area.

ILC: Not tested.


 - Advertise German VOMS role

The experiments are doing this permanently, but usually the user don't
see any difference between plain VO role or German VO role.


 - batch configuration for one hour jobs

The over subscription for 1 hour jobs was removed.


3. Status report:

Status report was given by Yves. See the agenda for the report. Below
a few highlights from the discussion are listed:

SubVersion client:

ATLAS needs SubVersion client 1.4.4 on SL4. Default is 1.1. It is
desirable to have the same major version on SL4 and SL5 as the newest
client will define the format version of the working repository. Older
clients can not read newer working repositories.

CMS and ILC not using svn as an official tool, but users might.

LHCb uses svn for Gaudi and client version 1.4.4 is fine.

The NAF admins will change the SL4 svn client to 1.4.4 early July and
will inform the users beforehand of this change.

SL5:

The NAF admins repeated that it is necessary to switch to SL5 as soon
as possible. New hardware will only run under SL5. New versions of
Lustre might also need SL5.

ATLAS and CMS have done some testing but can not test all use
cases. Standard applications especially compiled code should be fine
on SL5. Python based applications are usually more problematic. ATLAS
and CMS would like to wait until more experiences from more Grid sites
and CERN are available. The preferred switch over would be a few weeks
after the LXPLUS migration. Unfortunately, CERN does not know at the
moment when to do this.

ILC is ready for SL5.


5. AOB

LHCb asked if Grid resources can be moved into the interactive part of
the NAF. In the short term and for a few days this is not possible, as
for example the hardware is different (Infiniband for Lustre). In the
long term this request from LHCb can be taken into account for the
planning of the next NAF extension.