Microsoft Services for UNIX

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Microsoft Services for UNIX

Overview

Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX (SFU) makes it possible to integrate some Windows operating systems into existing UNIX environments. SFU provides components that simplify network administration and user management across the UNIX and Windows platforms. You can use SFU to do the following:

  • Integrate Windows hosts into Grid Engine clusters. This means that the execution and client environment of Grid Engine can be used on Microsoft Windows hosts. You must use Grid Engine in combination with SFU for this to occur.
  • Access the network file system (NFS). This makes it possible for you to share files between the UNIX and Windows environments.
  • Possibly access account and password services on UNIX and Windows systems (PCNFS, NIS) using the user mapping service.
  • Synchronize passwords and map authentication credentials between the UNIX and Windows operating systems. You can use the "single sign-on" capability for Windows and UNIX environments.
  • Execute UNIX shell scripts and applications to run on Windows platform-based computers in full-featured UNIX environments.


Interix, SFU's UNIX environment subsystem, offers the following features:

  • A complete, high-performance UNIX environment. You can use the csh shell or the ksh shell.
  • Several hundred tools and utilities.
  • A complete set of development tools and libraries that make it possible to port your UNIX-based applications to the Interix sub-system.

Unsupported Grid Engine Functionality

The following Grid Engine components are not supported in a Microsoft Windows environment and cannot be used on Windows Hosts even though they are standard to a Grid Engine installation:

  • Master and Scheduler (sge_qmaster and sge_shadowd)
  • Graphical User Interface (qmon)
  • DRMAA
  • qsh client command

System Requirements

The following system requirements apply to the SFU installation:

  • You must install at least Version 5.0 of Internet Explorer, before running the SFU setup.
  • You cannot install SFU on a system running Microsoft Services for Network File System. For example, Microsoft Services for NFS is a component of Windows Storage Server 2003.
  • You must install the latest Windows service pack before installing SFU and Grid Engine. Then, you can install additional Windows service packs as they become available.
  • The hard disk requirements for an SFU installation depend on which components you need to install. The following installation parameters apply:
    • The minimum disk space required is 20 MB.
    • The maximum disk space requirement is 360 MB.
    • SFU must be installed on a partition that is formatted with the NTFS file system.
  • You must disable Data Execution Prevention (DEP). DEP is not compatible with some parts of SFU and might cause segmentation faults. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352 for more information about DEP. To disable DEP, see Disabling DEP.

You can find more details concerning SFU requirements at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/.

Services for UNIX Installation

Microsoft's SFU is required to install Grid Engine successfully. You can download SFU from Microsoft. Search the site for "Windows Services for Unix" to find the current download information.

  1. Get the SFU distribution media.

  2. Execute the application to unzip the files into a directory.
    This directory must be located on a file system that has at least 480 MBytes free space.

  3. Log in to the Windows system with the Administrator account.

  4. Start the setup.exe application that you unpacked previously.
    Figure showing Windows Services for UNIX the welcome window for the SFU setup wizard.

  5. Enter your User name and Organization.
    Figure showing Windows dialog box asking for your name and organization.

  6. Accept the license agreement for SFU.
    Figure showing Windows dialog box asking you to accept the End-User License Agreement.

  7. Choose the standard installation (recommended) or the custom installation.
    Figure showing Windows dialog box that offers the choice between standard and custom installation.
    If disk space is limited, you might want to choose the custom installation. Make sure that you install at least the following components:
    • Utilities -> Base Utilities
    • Interix GNU components -> Interix GNU utilities
    • Remote connectivity components -> Telnet Server and Windows Remote Shell
    • If you intend to use NFS shared file systems, you also need Authentication tools for NFS -> User Mapping and Server for NFS Authentication.
  8. Depending on the Windows operating system, you might be presented with the following two options concerning SFU security settings, shown in the dialog box below:
    "Figure showing Windows dialog box
    If you need further information, consult Microsoft's SFU documentation.

  9. Configure User Name Mapping.
    Note
    User Name Mapping is part of SFU and not part of Sun Grid Engine. Consult Microsoft documentation and support to set up user mapping correctly.

    Your selection in the dialog box, shown below, depends on the hosts and services that are currently provided in your Windows and UNIX environments. If there is no Remote User Mapping server in your environment, then you should select Local User Name Mapping Server.
    Figure explained below.

    Note
    You should install SFU and enable the User Name Mapping service on your host that acts as a Domain Controller for your windows environment. All other hosts should contact that Remote User Name Mapping Server. If you choose Local User Name Mapping Server, then you might either select Network Information Services (NIS) to access your passwd and group NIS-maps. Otherwise, select l if you can provide the files yourself.

    See Configuring User Name Mapping for further details.

  10. Depending on your previous selections, you can either enter the NIS Domain name and NIS Server name or the path of the passwd and group files.
    Figure showing Windows dialog box that asks you to configure local user name mapping.
    Below is an example of the files that have the standard UNIX format. This means that you can also use your /etc/passwd and /etc/group files from your UNIX environment.
    C:\Unix\etc\passwd 
    root:x:0:0:UNIX root user:/home/root:/bin/tcsh
    user1:x:1002:100:Full name of user1:/home/user1:/bin/tcsh
    C:\Unix\etc\group
    root::0:
    
    Note
    Some NIS maps do not contain an entry for the root user. If this is the case, follow these steps to map Administrator to root:
    1. First create a password file containing the root entry.
    2. If the SFU installation is finished, start the Services for UNIX Administration application and create the mapping: Administrator <-> root.
    3. Switch to NIS mapping.
    4. Use simple mapping or add manual mappings.
      At this point the installation starts installing components. Wait until all components are installed.
  11. When the installation process finishes, you might need to reboot the machine, depending on the version of Windows that you are using.

  12. Make sure that the Interix Subsystem Startup starts during boot time.
    If you intend to use NFS shares and user mapping, then also start Client for NFS and User Name Mapping.
    Depending on the installation options and your version of the Windows operating system, one or more of these services are disabled by default.

Post SFU Installation Tasks

There are several steps you should follow after you install the SFU software.

  1. Before you start using SFU and install Grid Engine, check that the user mapping is working correctly by following these steps:
    1. Open an Interix shell locally on the Interix host.
    2. Use the login command to switch to a known user that is not the Administrator.
    3. Verify the access permissions for NFS shares that should be accessible to that user.
    4. Try to access these network resources. If a user cannot access a Network drive, most likely the User Name Mapping is not working correctly.

  2. Check users' home directories.
    To enable the automounting of the users' home directories, use the following series of menus:
    Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Users -> Properties -> Profile
    

    Click connect to, select a drive letter, and enter the path of the user's home directory in UNC notation: \\<server>\<share>\<user home>.

    Within the Interix subsystem, you might access all NFS shares through the special directory: /net/server/share.

    You might also create links to these directories to access the shares directly, for example, ln -s /net/myserver/export/share00/home/home.

  3. Enable Administrator names on your machines.
    Make sure that the administrator accounts on all machines that are enabled as execution hosts for Grid Engine use the same account name, such as Administrator.

    Also make sure that this user has manager privileges in your Sun Grid Engine cluster. If this is not the case, add the privileges using qconf -am administrator before the installation of the execution daemon.

  4. Set the CLI commands.
    This starts an editor. Make sure to set the EDITOR environment variable to vi, or your preferred UNIX editor, within the Interix subsystem before you start using UNIX commands.

  5. Mount NFS shares.
    There are two ways to mount NFS shares to the Interix host:
    • The recommended way is to use the auto mount functionality of Interix. All network shares that the Computer Browser service of Windows can find are automatically mounted to the /net directory of Interix. Although only some of these shares might be listed with ls /net, all shares are accessible. The syntax of the auto mount is /net/server/share, such as /net/myserver/home. A link to an auto-mounted share can be created to make it accessible under exactly the same name as on a UNIX host. For example, ln -s /net/myserver/home /home makes the users' UNIX home directories accessible through /home/username. Automounted shares are available starting at boot time. They are available for all users who have the permissions to access these shares. The shares cannot get lost by misconfiguration.
    • Network shares can also be mapped to drive letters by using the command nfsmount. The syntax is /usr/sbin/nfsmount -u: \\<computername>\<sharename> <devicename>. For example:
      /usr/sbin/nfsmount -u: \\\\myserver\\home Z:
      

      This drive is now accessible through /def/fs/Z. A link can be created to this drive to have the same path as on a UNIX host.

      Note
      As shown in the example above, all backslashes must be written twice because the shell interprets a single backslash as an escape character.



  6. Configure the users' home directories.
    If the users' home directories are located on an NFS server, follow these steps to configure the users' home directories in Windows:
    1. In the Profile tab of the users properties dialog box, select Connect.
    2. Select a free drive letter.
    3. Enter the path to the user's home directory in the UNC notation \\<server>\<share>\<directory>, for example, \\myserver\home\Peter.

Troubleshooting SFU

The following section describes some common problems that users may encounter when installing and using Grid Engine in a Services for UNIX environment on a Windows system.

  • Impossible to connect to the Interix subsystem through telnet or rsh.
    Make sure that the correct services are started. The corresponding Windows services must be disabled. The Interix versions of telnetd and rshd must be started. You can do this task by removing the pound sign (#) from the following lines in /etc/inetd.conf:
    #telnet stream tcp nowait NULL /usr/sbin/in.telnetd in.telnetd -i
    #shell stream tcp nowait NULL /usr/sbin/in.rshd in.rshd -a
    

    If you still cannot connect to the machine, check your firewall configuration. Do not block connections to corresponding ports:

    Service  |  Ports
    ---------+-----------
    ftp      |  20, 21
    ssh      |  22
    telnet   |  23
    rsh      |  514
    
  • The wrong default login shell is started. Why?
    Both the .rhost and host.equiv authentications fail if new user accounts are created and if the passwords of existing users are changed. In this case, the command regpwd needs to be called. After that, follow the steps to register passwords correctly.
  • Why is the access to NFS mounted home directories slow?
    User Name Mapping might be the cause. For a large number of user maps, installing User Name Mapping on a Domain Controller improves performance by reducing network traffic. You can create a User Name Mapping server pool. This method means that you use DNS round-robin to create a pool of computers running User Name Mapping. This provides improved performance on wide area networks and provides failover when one of the servers is no longer available.
  • How can I map user root if it does not exist in the NIS maps?
    First create a passwd file which contains an entry for the user root. Then, explicitly map the root account (no basic mapping) using the created passwd file. Finally, change the mapping to use the NIS maps. Note that the previous root mapping will persist.
  • NIS Server cannot be contacted during the SFU installation.
    Interrupt the SFU installation and make sure that there is no other service or application running which already configures or uses the NIS server. If this is the case, then disable this service for the duration of the SFU installation.
  • The Interix Subsystem of SFU or the User Mapping is not enabled after reboot.
    Make sure that Interix Subsystem Startup and User Name Mapping are automatically started after machine reboot. Also if you use NFS mounted directories, enable the service by default: Client for NFS.
  • Queues stick in unknown state for a very long time.
    After the installation or restart of an execution host, the corresponding queues have attached the unknown (u) state for a very long time. This is normal behavior for Windows machines. After a full load report interval, the u state should be gone. If this is not the case, then check that the sge_execd has been started on the corresponding machine.

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  1. Aug 20, 2008

    Dean_Stanton says:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp doesn't work for me, but http:/...

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp doesn't work for me, but
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=896C9688-601B-44F1-81A4-02878FF11778&displaylang=en
    is info about the latest version of MS SFU. A key point is that it is not supported on Vista.
    I infer that SGE therefore does not currently support Vista hosts (at all). BTW,
    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/ seems to invoke
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/interopmigration/bb380242.aspx
    but that page doesn't have the useful info that the long URL above does.

    http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/11634188/security%20settings.gif
    shows the panel with some answers checked, but doesn't say if those answers
    are required for use of SFU with SGE or not.

    1. Oct 13, 2008

      surajp says:

      Comment# 1: This URL http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp is wrong....

      Comment# 1:

      This URL http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/default.asp is wrong. The correct URL for Windows SFU info is http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/. I have updated the doc.

      Comment# 2:

      We will be fixing this in the current release of SGE.

      Thanks for the comments.

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