Run Your Algorithm On The Grid

The grid driver is currently broken. Do not do the exercises in this section until it is fixed.

You can run your algorithm on the grid through built-in functionality.

In a new shell, navigate to AnalysisTutorial. Set up panda and then set up your analysis release.

The nice thing about using EventLoop (and Athena) is that you don’t have to change any of your algorithms code, we simply change the driver in the steering script. It is recommended that you use a separate submit script when running on the grid.

Let’s copy the content of ATestRun_eljob.py all the way up to, and including, the driver.submit() statement into a new file ATestSubmit_eljob.py. In the new file, change submit() to submitOnly().

If you use the submit() command, the script will wait until the grid jobs are finished, which we don’t want. The submitOnly() command will launch the jobs and then return control.

Next, we need to tell SampleHandler how to find the input file(s) on the grid. In ATestSubmit_eljob.py, comment out the directory scan and instead scan using Rucio (shown below).

Since we are just testing this functionality we will use a very small input dataset so your job will run quickly and you can have quick feedback regarding the success (let’s hope it’s a success) of your job.

#sample = ROOT.SH.SampleLocal("dataset")
#sample.add (os.getenv ('ASG_TEST_FILE_MC'))  
#sh.add (sample)

ROOT.SH.scanRucio(sh, ' mc20_13TeV.410470.PhPy8EG_A14_ttbar_hdamp258p75_nonallhad.deriv.DAOD_PHYS.e6337_s3681_r13167_p5169/' )

Next, replace the driver with the PrunDriver:

# driver = ROOT.EL.DirectDriver()
driver = ROOT.EL.PrunDriver()

We actually need to specify a structure to the output dataset name, as our input sample has a really really long name, and by default the output dataset name will contain (among other strings) this input dataset name which is too long for the Grid to handle. So after you’ve defined this PrunDriver add:

driver.options().setString("nc_outputSampleName", "user.<nickname>.grid_test_run")

Be sure to replace <nickname> again

The PrunDriver supports a number of optional configuration options that you might recognize from the prun program. If you want detailed control over how jobs are submitted, please consult this page for a list of options: GridDriver

Finally, submit the jobs as before:

ATestSubmit_eljob.py --submission-dir=submitDir

This job submission process may take a while to complete - do not interrupt it! You will be prompted to enter your Grid certificate password.

If you need to log out from your computer but you still want output to be continuously downloaded so that it is immediately available when you come back, a somewhat more advanced GridDriver exists which will use Ganga and GangaService to keep running in the background, see the EventLoop twiki page for more info.

If you need more information on options available for running on the grid, check out the grid driver documentation.

Running with Athena

If you are using Athena, you can learn how to submit jobs to the grid using pathena at this link