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Installation Guide

This guide installs Waldur Site Agent on a Linux host and gets it ready to run as systemd services. For Kubernetes, use the Helm chart instead. For the fastest path to a first working agent, follow the Quickstart, which also covers creating the offering in Waldur.

Every command in this guide was run on Ubuntu 24.04 and Rocky Linux 9.

Before you start

  • A Waldur offering of type Waldur site agent, its UUID, and an API token for an account with the OFFERING.MANAGER role on it — see Quickstart, step 1.
  • Root access to the host the agent runs on. For SLURM this is a host that can run sacctmgr and sacct against your cluster's accounting database.
  • Outbound HTTPS from that host to the Waldur API. Event mode additionally connects to Waldur's STOMP endpoint over WebSocket (see Configuration).

What gets installed

The agent is a core package plus one plugin package per backend. The core package contains no backends: installing only waldur-site-agent gives an agent that fails with Unable to create backend for every offering. Install, in the same environment:

  • waldur-site-agent — the agent and its commands
  • the plugin for each backend your offerings use, e.g. waldur-site-agent-slurm (the full list is in the README)
  • waldur-site-agent-basic-username-management — provides the default username_management_backend: "base". Install it unless every offering sets another username backend (for example ldap from waldur-site-agent-ldap)

All packages share one version number. Install and upgrade them together.

1. Operating system packages

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sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y curl ca-certificates
# SLURM backend only: sacct and sacctmgr
sudo apt install -y slurm-client

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# curl is preinstalled (curl-minimal); installing the full curl package conflicts with it
# SLURM backend only: sacct and sacctmgr (from EPEL)
sudo dnf install -y epel-release
sudo dnf install -y slurm

For SLURM, the host also needs your cluster's slurm.conf (and munge key, if your cluster uses munge) so that sacctmgr show cluster works. Check that before going on. Other backends talk to their service over HTTP and need nothing extra; see the plugin's README for anything specific (for example the oc client for OKD).

2. Install the agent

The recommended install uses uv (0.8.5 or newer). With --managed-python it runs the agent on a Python it downloads into /opt/waldur-agent/python, so the host's Python and its OS updates do not affect the agent. Without the flag uv reuses a matching system Python (Ubuntu 24.04's /usr/bin/python3.12). uv puts the agent's commands in /usr/local/bin, where systemd finds them.

Rocky Linux leaves /usr/local/bin out of sudo's secure_path and out of root's PATH, so this guide calls every command by its full path under sudo. That works on both systems; on Ubuntu the short names work too.

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# uv, system-wide
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh \
  | sudo env UV_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin UV_NO_MODIFY_PATH=1 sh

# The agent with the SLURM plugin and the default username backend
sudo env UV_TOOL_DIR=/opt/waldur-agent/tools \
         UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin \
         UV_PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR=/opt/waldur-agent/python \
  /usr/local/bin/uv tool install --python 3.12 --managed-python waldur-site-agent \
    --with-executables-from waldur-site-agent-slurm \
    --with waldur-site-agent-basic-username-management

For other backends, add one --with waldur-site-agent-<plugin> per plugin. Use --with-executables-from instead of --with for a plugin that ships its own command, so the command lands on the PATH too — the SLURM plugin ships waldur_site_diagnose_slurm_account.

Do not run a separate uv tool install waldur-site-agent-<plugin>: every uv tool install creates its own isolated environment, and the agent never sees a plugin installed into a different one.

Pin a version (recommended for production) by adding ==<VERSION> to every package, for example waldur-site-agent==1.0.8 and waldur-site-agent-slurm==1.0.8.

Check the install

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/usr/local/bin/waldur_site_agent --help

# The backends the agent can see — every backend your offerings use must be listed
/opt/waldur-agent/tools/waldur-site-agent/bin/python -c "
from waldur_site_agent.common.utils import BACKENDS, USERNAME_BACKENDS
print('backends:', sorted(BACKENDS), 'username backends:', sorted(USERNAME_BACKENDS))"

With the command above this prints backends: ['slurm'] username backends: ['base']. For the pip install below, use /opt/waldur-agent/venv/bin/python instead.

Alternative: a virtual environment with pip

If uv is not an option, use a virtual environment (Python 3.9.2 or newer) and link the commands into /usr/local/bin:

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sudo python3 -m venv /opt/waldur-agent/venv
sudo /opt/waldur-agent/venv/bin/pip install \
  waldur-site-agent waldur-site-agent-slurm waldur-site-agent-basic-username-management
sudo ln -sf /opt/waldur-agent/venv/bin/waldur_* /usr/local/bin/

Re-run the ln line after installing a plugin that adds a command.

3. Configuration

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sudo mkdir -p /etc/waldur
sudo curl -L \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/waldur/waldur-site-agent/main/examples/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml.example \
  -o /etc/waldur/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml
sudo chmod 600 /etc/waldur/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml

The example holds several offerings; keep the ones you need and fill in, for each:

  • waldur_api_url, waldur_offering_uuid
  • waldur_api_token, or the three oidc_* keys for OIDC client credentials
  • backend_type and the order_processing_backend, membership_sync_backend and reporting_backend you run — an offering without them is skipped or fails
  • backend_settings and backend_components for your backend

The Configuration Reference describes every key. Then push the offering's components into Waldur:

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sudo /usr/local/bin/waldur_site_load_components -c /etc/waldur/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml

If your backend creates home directories (SLURM with enable_user_homedir_account_creation left on), create them for existing users once:

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sudo /usr/local/bin/waldur_site_create_homedirs -c /etc/waldur/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml

4. Verify

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sudo /usr/local/bin/waldur_site_diagnostics -c /etc/waldur/waldur-site-agent-config.yaml
echo "exit code: $?"

Diagnostics checks both sides for every offering: the Waldur API, token and offering, and the backend itself (for SLURM it runs the SLURM tools). It exits non-zero when something is wrong. For SLURM, waldur_site_diagnose_slurm_account <allocation-account> compares one account's actual SLURM state with what Waldur expects, once resources exist; the account name is the resource's backend ID in Waldur.

5. Run it

Install the systemd units as described in the Deployment Guide.

Firewall and SELinux

  • The agent only makes outbound connections: HTTPS to the Waldur API and, in event mode, a WebSocket to the STOMP endpoint (stomp_ws_host / stomp_ws_port). No inbound ports are needed.
  • Behind a proxy, set global_proxy in the configuration (HTTP or SOCKS5). The STOMP WebSocket does not use it yet; set https_proxy in the unit's environment for event mode.
  • With SELinux enforcing, check ausearch -m avc -ts recent if a unit fails to start or the agent cannot reach Waldur or the backend.

Kubernetes (Helm)

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helm repo add waldur https://waldur.github.io/waldur-site-agent
helm repo update
helm install waldur-site-agent waldur/waldur-site-agent --values my-values.yaml

The image is built with every plugin in the repository at that release. See the chart README for the values and modes.

Development installation

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git clone https://github.com/waldur/waldur-site-agent.git
cd waldur-site-agent
uv sync --all-packages
uv run waldur_site_agent --help

uv sync --all-packages installs the core package and every plugin into the repository's .venv.