Frontend not starting on Alma9

Troubleshooting
1

We are having trouble getting the frontend to start on Alma9. I don’t understand why.
From the cta-frontend-xrootd.log files

=====> ssi.svclib libXrdSsiCta.so 
Config Configuring standalone server. 
Plugin No such file or directory loading svclib libXrdSsiCta.so 
------ ssi initialization failed. 
240524 09:33:01 2780116 XrootdConfig: Unable to load file system via libXrdSsi.so 
240524 09:33:01 2780116 XrootdConfig: Unable to load base file system using libXrdSsi.so 
------ xroot protocol initialization failed. 
240524 09:33:01 2780116 XrdProtocol: Protocol xroot could not be loaded 
------ xrootd cta@cmscta02.fnal.gov:10955 initialization failed.

is where it goes wrong on Alma9 whereas on CC7 it proceeds

=====> ssi.svclib libXrdSsiCta.so 
Config Configuring standalone server. 
240524 09:33:39 1978664 ssi_XrdSsiCtaServiceProvider: pid:1978664 tid:139973529921728 XrdSsiCtaServiceProvider() constructor 
240524 09:33:39 1978664 ssi_XrdSsiCtaServiceProvider: pid:1978664 tid:139973529921728 Called Init(/etc/cta/cta-frontend-xrootd.conf,) 
------ ssi initialization completed. 
------ xroot protocol initialization completed. 
------ xrootd cta@cmscta01.fnal.gov:10955 initialization completed.

The libXrdSsiCta.so file is in the same place on both system (/usr/lib64). I don’t know what else I could/should be looking at.

2

Hi Eric,
hard to tell without seeing the file. Could you provide a sample?

Here are the values we changed/added to as apart of our Alma9 migration:

cta.log.ssi warning

# CTA Objectstore options
cta.objectstore.backendpath <%= @objectstore_url %>

# Block requests for user or repack
cta.schedulerdb.enable_repack_requests on
cta.schedulerdb.enable_user_requests on

# CTA Catalogue options
cta.catalogue.numberofconnections <%= @cataloguenumberofconnections %>

# Maximum file size (in GB) that the CTA Frontend will accept for archiving
cta.archivefile.max_size_gb 1000

# Logging achieved with rsyslog
cta.log.url file:/var/log/cta/cta-frontend.log

cta.log.format json

# Keytab containing gRPC endpoints and tokens for each disk instance
cta.ns.config /etc/cta/eos.grpc.keytab

Since the error is related to libXrdSsiCta I would guess that maybe the cta.log.ssi could be missing?

3

We found the issue. It was that the Oracle client version 21 was not installed on the system. Is that not in the CTA RPMs as a hard dependency?

I know there is a plan to get rid of this dependency so that Postgres sites don’t need it.

Thanks!

Eric

4

Hi Eric,

Oracle client version 21 is indeed not a hard dependency at the moment. I’m unsure why this is the case, but I will see if we can fix it for a future version.

Anyway, work is indeed in progress to decouple the Oracle and Postgres dependencies from CTA. Once this is complete you will only need to install one of them for the system to work, and CTA will ensure that in either case all the necessary dependencies are there.