Missing environment with "display_win_gui=true"

[dlove]

From Thimo Neubauer.
​http://arc.liv.ac.uk/pipermail/sge-discuss/2011-November/000190.html:

Hi!

I've got a problem with Grid Engine on Windows hosts and wanted to
check whether I'm missing something obvious or encountering a
bug. What I'm experiencing is that the usual GE environment variables
(including PE_HOSTFILE) aren't set when "-l display_win_gui=true" is
set. You can see the effect when you qsub

  /dev/fs/C/Windows/System32/cmd.exe /c "set S > c:\env.txt"

where "c:\env.txt" will contain all environment variables starting
with "S". With "display_win_gui=true" I don't see a single SGE_*
variable; without I get  SGE_CELL, SGE_ARCH, etc. like I expected. I'm
working with sources I've taken from darcs in June. Before upgrading
to 8.0.0c I've decided to review the diff: nothing in there seems like
fix to me.

I've traced the sources so far as to understand that
SGE_Helper_Service is used for the display_win_gui mode and that it
constructs an environment for the process. However I don't understand
the architecture enough to see how execd/shepherd pass information
into the helper.

My use case is a test of our Windows-GUI based application which can
initiate MPI computations. Without PE_HOSTFILE I fail to see how I can
find out which hosts I can use for the MPI run :)

[aylee]

I've found the reason: in "display_win_gui=true" mode the job start goes from shepherd via SGE_Helper_Service.exe to SGE_Starter.exe. The helper service knows (and sets) the environment correctly but in SGE_Starter.cpp the call to spawn the executable

WriteToLogFile("Creating Process with command line \"%s\"", szCmdLine);
bResult = CreateProcessWithLogonW(
  szwUser,
  szwDomain,
  szwPass,
  LOGON_WITH_PROFILE,
  NULL,
  szwCmdLine,
  NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
  NULL,
  NULL,
  (LPSTARTUPINFOW)&si,
  &pi);

passes NULL as environment (the eigth parameter). Consequently the default user environment is used...

[aylee]

Following the example in

​http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682431%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

I've used CreateEnvironmentBlock? to inherit from the current environment. The attached patch works for me but certainly isn't the most elegant code I've ever written...

Lets see whether more surprises appear when I deploy the changed SGE_Starter.exe to our cluster...

[dlove]

SGE <sge-bugs@…> writes:

I've used CreateEnvironmentBlock? to inherit from the current environment.
The attached patch works for me but certainly isn't the most elegant code
I've ever written...

Lets see whether more surprises appear when I deploy the changed
SGE_Starter.exe to our cluster...

Thanks for that. I'll install it if you can confirm there weren't any
nasty surprises.

[aylee]

Final patch

[aylee]

Improved the patch a bit: before Windows set "HOME" to "/" which confused my subsequent code. This code works fine on our cluster.

[Dave Love <d.love@…>]

In [4143/sge]:

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