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===========================================================================
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Thanks for your time.
===========================================================================
Much, much more information is also available in the Open MPI FAQ:
http://www.open-mpi.org/faq/
===========================================================================
The following abbreviated list of release notes applies to this code
base as of this writing (19 September 2007):
- Open MPI includes support for a wide variety of supplemental
hardware and software package. When configuring Open MPI, you may
need to supply additional flags to the "configure" script in order
to tell Open MPI where the header files, libraries, and any other
required files are located. As such, running "configure" by itself
may include support for all the devices (etc.) that you expect,
especially if their support headers / libraries are installed in
non-standard locations. Network interconnects are an easy example
to discuss -- Myrinet and InfiniBand, for example, both have
supplemental headers and libraries that must be found before Open
MPI can build support for them. You must specify where these files
are with the appropriate options to configure. See the listing of
configure command-line switches, below, for more details.
- The Open MPI installation must be in your PATH on all nodes (and
potentially LD_LIBRARY_PATH, if libmpi is a shared library), unless
using the --prefix or --enable-mpirun-prefix-by-default
functionality (see below).
- LAM/MPI-like mpirun notation of "C" and "N" is not yet supported.
- Striping MPI messages across multiple networks is supported (and
happens automatically when multiple networks are available), but
needs performance tuning.
- The run-time systems that are currently supported are:
- rsh / ssh
- BProc versions 3 and 4 with LSF
- LoadLeveler
- PBS Pro, Open PBS, Torque
- SLURM
- XGrid
- Cray XT-3 and XT-4
- Sun N1 Grid Engine (N1GE) 6 and open source Grid Engine
- The majority of Open MPI's documentation is here in this file, the
included man pages, and on the web site FAQ
(http://www.open-mpi.org/). This will eventually be supplemented
with cohesive installation and user documentation files.
- Systems that have been tested are:
- Linux, 32 bit, with gcc
- Linux, 64 bit (x86), with gcc
- OS X (10.4), 32 and 64 bit (i386, PPC, PPC64, x86_64), with gcc
- Solaris 10 updates 2 and 3, SPARC and AMD, 32 and 64 bit, with Sun
Studio 10 and 11
- Other systems have been lightly (but not fully tested):
- Other compilers on Linux, 32 and 64 bit
- Other 64 bit platforms (e.g., Linux on PPC64)
- Some MCA parameters can be set in a way that renders Open MPI
inoperable (see notes about MCA parameters later in this file). In
particular, some parameters have required options that must be
included.
- If specified, the "btl" parameter must include the "self"
component, or Open MPI will not be able to deliver messages to the
same rank as the sender. For example: "mpirun --mca btl tcp,self
..."
- If specified, the "btl_tcp_if_exclude" paramater must include the
loopback device ("lo" on many Linux platforms), or Open MPI will
not be able to route MPI messages using the TCP BTL. For example:
"mpirun --mca btl_tcp_if_exclude lo,eth1 ..."
- Open MPI does not support the Sparc v8 CPU target, which is the
default on Sun Solaris. The v8plus (32 bit) or v9 (64 bit)
targets must be used to build Open MPI on Solaris. This can be
done by including a flag in CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, FFLAGS, and FCFLAGS,
-xarch=v8plus for the Sun compilers, -mv8plus for GCC.
- At least some versions of the Intel 8.1 compiler seg fault while
compiling certain Open MPI source code files. As such, it is not
supported.
- The Intel 9.0 v20051201 compiler on IA64 platforms seems to have a
problem with optimizing the ptmalloc2 memory manager component (the
generated code will segv). As such, the ptmalloc2 component will
automatically disable itself if it detects that it is on this
platform/compiler combination. The only effect that this should
have is that the MCA parameter mpi_leave_pinned will be inoperative.
- Early versions of the Portland Group 6.0 compiler have problems
creating the C++ MPI bindings as a shared library (e.g., v6.0-1).
Tests with later versions show that this has been fixed (e.g.,
v6.0-5).
- The Portland Group compilers prior to version 7.0 require the
"-Msignextend" compiler flag to extend the sign bit when converting
from a shorter to longer integer. This is is different than other
compilers (such as GNU). When compiling Open MPI with the Portland
compiler suite, the following flags should be passed to Open MPI's
configure script:
shell$ ./configure CFLAGS=-Msignextend CXXFLAGS=-Msignextend \
--with-wrapper-cflags=-Msignextend \
--with-wrapper-cxxflags=-Msignextend ...
This will both compile Open MPI with the proper compile flags and
also automatically add "-Msignextend" when the C and C++ MPI wrapper
compilers are used to compile user MPI applications.
- Open MPI will build bindings suitable for all common forms of
Fortran 77 compiler symbol mangling on platforms that support it
(e.g., Linux). On platforms that do not support weak symbols (e.g.,
OS X), Open MPI will build Fortran 77 bindings just for the compiler
that Open MPI was configured with.
Hence, on platforms that support it, if you configure Open MPI with
a Fortran 77 compiler that uses one symbol mangling scheme, you can
successfully compile and link MPI Fortran 77 applications with a
Fortran 77 compiler that uses a different symbol mangling scheme.
NOTE: For platforms that support the multi-Fortran-compiler bindings
(i.e., weak symbols are supported), due to limitations in the MPI
standard and in Fortran compilers, it is not possible to hide these
differences in all cases. Specifically, the following two cases may
not be portable between different Fortran compilers:
1. The C constants MPI_F_STATUS_IGNORE and MPI_F_STATUSES_IGNORE
will only compare properly to Fortran applications that were
created with Fortran compilers that that use the same
name-mangling scheme as the Fortran compiler that Open MPI was
configured with.
2. Fortran compilers may have different values for the logical
.TRUE. constant. As such, any MPI function that uses the Fortran
LOGICAL type may only get .TRUE. values back that correspond to
the the .TRUE. value of the Fortran compiler that Open MPI was
configured with. Note that some Fortran compilers allow forcing
.TRUE. to be 1 and .FALSE. to be 0. For example, the Portland
Group compilers provide the "-Munixlogical" option, and Intel
compilers (version >= 8.) provide the "-fpscomp logicals" option.
You can use the ompi_info command to see the Fortran compiler that
Open MPI was configured with.
- Running on nodes with different endian and/or different datatype
sizes within a single parallel job is supported in this release.
However, Open MPI does not resize data when datatypes differ in size
(for example, sending a 4 byte MPI_DOUBLE and receiving an 8 byte
MPI_DOUBLE will fail).
- MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE support is included, but is only lightly tested.
It likely does not work for thread-intensive applications.
- Asynchronous message passing progress using threads can be turned on
with the --enable-progress-threads option to configure.
Asynchronous message passing progress is only supported for TCP,
shared memory, and Myrinet/GM. Myrinet/GM has only been lightly
tested.
- The XGrid support is experimental - see the Open MPI FAQ and this
post on the Open MPI user's mailing list for more information:
http://www.open-mpi.org/community/lists/users/2006/01/0539.php
- The OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) software package v1.0
will not work properly with Open MPI v1.2 (and later) due to how its
Mellanox InfiniBand plugin driver is created. The problem is fixed
OFED v1.1 (and later).
- The use of the mvapi BTL is deprecated. All new InfiniBand work is
being done in the openib BTL (i.e., the OpenFabrics driver stack).
- The use of fork() with the openib BTL is only partially supported,
and only on Linux kernels >= v2.6.15 with libibverbs v1.1 or later
(first released as part of OFED v1.2). More complete support will
be included in a future release of Open MPI (see the OFED 1.2
distribution for details).
- iWARP support is not yet included in the Open MPI OpenFabrics
support.
- The Fortran 90 MPI bindings can now be built in one of three sizes
using --with-mpi-f90-size=SIZE (see description below). These sizes
reflect the number of MPI functions included in the "mpi" Fortran 90
module and therefore which functions will be subject to strict type
checking. All functions not included in the Fortran 90 module can
still be invoked from F90 applications, but will fall back to
Fortran-77 style checking (i.e., little/none).
- trivial: Only includes F90-specific functions from MPI-2. This
means overloaded versions of MPI_SIZEOF for all the MPI-supported
F90 intrinsic types.
- small (default): All the functions in "trivial" plus all MPI
functions that take no choice buffers (meaning buffers that are
specified by the user and are of type (void*) in the C bindings --
generally buffers specified for message passing). Hence,
functions like MPI_COMM_RANK are included, but functions like
MPI_SEND are not.
- medium: All the functions in "small" plus all MPI functions that
take one choice buffer (e.g., MPI_SEND, MPI_RECV, ...). All
one-choice-buffer functions have overloaded variants for each of
the MPI-supported Fortran intrinsic types up to the number of
dimensions specified by --with-f90-max-array-dim (default value is
4).
Increasing the size of the F90 module (in order from trivial, small,
and medium) will generally increase the length of time required to
compile user MPI applications. Specifically, "trivial"- and
"small"-sized F90 modules generally allow user MPI applications to
be compiled fairly quickly but lose type safety for all MPI
functions with choice buffers. "medium"-sized F90 modules generally
take longer to compile user applications but provide greater type
safety for MPI functions.
Note that MPI functions with two choice buffers (e.g., MPI_GATHER)
are not currently included in Open MPI's F90 interface. Calls to
these functions will automatically fall through to Open MPI's F77
interface. A "large" size that includes the two choice buffer MPI
functions is possible in future versions of Open MPI.
- Starting with Open MPI v1.2, there are two MPI network models
available: "ob1" and "cm". "ob1" uses the familiar BTL components
for each supported network. "cm" introduces MTL components for
each supported network.
- "ob1" supports a variety of networks that can be used in
combination with each other (per OS constraints; e.g., there are
reports that the GM and OpenFabrics kernel drivers do not operate
well together):
- InfiniBand: mVAPI and the OpenFabrics stack
- Loopback (send-to-self)
- Myrinet: GM and MX
- Portals
- Shared memory
- TCP
- uDAPL
- "cm" supports a smaller number of networks (and they cannot be
used together), but may provide better better overall MPI
performance:
- Myrinet MX (not GM)
- InfiniPath PSM
- Portals
Open MPI will, by default, choose to use "cm" if it finds a
cm-supported network at run-time. Users can force the use of ob1 if
desired by setting the "pml" MCA parameter at run-time:
shell$ mpirun --mca pml ob1 ...
- The MX support is shared between the 2 internal devices, the MTL
and the BTL. MTL stands for Message Transport Layer, while BTL
stands for Byte Transport Layer. The design of the BTL interface
in Open MPI assumes that only naive one-sided communication
capabilities are provided by the low level communication layers.
However, modern communication layers such as MX, PSM or Portals,
natively implement highly-optimized two-sided communication
semantics. To leverage these capabilities, Open MPI provides the
MTL interface to transfer messages rather than bytes.
The MTL interface implements a shorter code path and lets the
low-level network library decide which protocol to use, depending
on message length, internal resources and other parameters
specific to the interconnect used. However, Open MPI cannot
currently use multiple MTL modules at once. In the case of the
MX MTL, self and shared memory communications are provided by the
MX library. Moreover, the current MX MTL does not support message
pipelining resulting in lower performances in case of non-contiguous
data-types.
In the case of the BTL, MCA parameters allow Open MPI to use our own
shared memory and self device for increased performance.
The BTL interface allows multiple devices to be used simultaneously.
For the MX BTL it is recommended that the first segment (which is
as a threshold between the eager and the rendezvous protocol) should
always be at most 4KB, but there is no further restriction on
the size of subsequent fragments.
The MX MTL is recommended in the common case for best performance
on 10G hardware, when most of the data transfers cover contiguous
memory layouts. The MX BTL is recommended in all other cases, more
specifically when using multiple interconnects at the same time
(including TCP), transferring non contiguous data-types or when
using the DR PML.
===========================================================================
Building Open MPI
-----------------
Open MPI uses a traditional configure script paired with "make" to
build. Typical installs can be of the pattern:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
shell$ ./configure [...options...]
shell$ make all install
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are many available configure options (see "./configure --help"
for a full list); a summary of the more commonly used ones follows:
--prefix=<directory>
Install Open MPI into the base directory named <directory>. Hence,
Open MPI will place its executables in <directory>/bin, its header
files in <directory>/include, its libraries in <directory>/lib, etc.
--with-gm=<directory>
Specify the directory where the GM libraries and header files are
located. This enables GM support in Open MPI.
--with-gm-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the GM libraries. By default, Open MPI will
look in <gm directory>/lib and <gm directory>/lib64, which covers
most cases. This option is only needed for special configurations.
--with-mx=<directory>
Specify the directory where the MX libraries and header files are
located. This enables MX support in Open MPI.
--with-mx-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the MX libraries. By default, Open MPI will
look in <mx directory>/lib and <mx directory>/lib64, which covers
most cases. This option is only needed for special configurations.
--with-mvapi=<directory>
Specify the directory where the mVAPI libraries and header files are
located. This enables mVAPI support in Open MPI (although it is
deprecated).
--with-mvapi-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the MVAPI libraries. By default, Open MPI will
look in <mvapi directory>/lib and <mvapi directory>/lib64, which covers
most cases. This option is only needed for special configurations.
--with-openib=<directory>
Specify the directory where the OpenFabrics (previously known as
OpenIB) libraries and header files are located. This enables
OpenFabrics support in Open MPI.
--with-openib-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the OpenFabrics libraries. By default, Open
MPI will look in <openib directory>/lib and <openib
directory>/lib64, which covers most cases. This option is only
needed for special configurations.
--with-psm=<directory>
Specify the directory where the QLogic PSM library and header files
are located. This enables InfiniPath support in Open MPI.
--with-psm-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the PSM libraries. By default, Open MPI will
look in <psm directory>/lib and <psm directory>/lib64, which covers
most cases. This option is only needed for special configurations.
--with-udapl=<directory>
Specify the directory where the UDAPL libraries and header files are
located. This enables UDAPL support in Open MPI. Note that UDAPL
support is disabled by default on Linux; the --with-udapl flag must
be specified in order to enable it.
--with-udapl-libdir=<directory>
Look in directory for the UDAPL libraries. By default, Open MPI
will look in <udapl directory>/lib and <udapl directory>/lib64,
which covers most cases. This option is only needed for special
configurations.
--with-tm=<directory>
Specify the directory where the TM libraries and header files are
located. This enables PBS / Torque support in Open MPI.
--with-mpi-param_check(=value)
"value" can be one of: always, never, runtime. If --with-mpi-param
is not specified, "runtime" is the default. If --with-mpi-param
is specified with no value, "always" is used. Using
--without-mpi-param-check is equivalent to "never".
- always: the parameters of MPI functions are always checked for
errors
- never: the parameters of MPI functions are never checked for
errors
- runtime: whether the parameters of MPI functions are checked
depends on the value of the MCA parameter mpi_param_check
(default: yes).
--with-threads=value
Since thread support (both support for MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE and
asynchronous progress) is only partially tested, it is disabled by
default. To enable threading, use "--with-threads=posix". This is
most useful when combined with --enable-mpi-threads and/or
--enable-progress-threads.
--enable-mpi-threads
Allows the MPI thread level MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE. See
--with-threads; this is currently disabled by default.
--enable-progress-threads
Allows asynchronous progress in some transports. See
--with-threads; this is currently disabled by default.
--disable-mpi-cxx
Disable building the C++ MPI bindings. Note that this does *not*
disable the C++ checks during configure; some of Open MPI's tools
are written in C++ and therefore require a C++ compiler to be built.
--disable-mpi-cxx-seek
Disable the MPI::SEEK_* constants. Due to a problem with the MPI-2
specification, these constants can conflict with system-level SEEK_*
constants. Open MPI attempts to work around this problem, but the
workaround may fail in some esoteric situations. The
--disable-mpi-cxx-seek switch disables Open MPI's workarounds (and
therefore the MPI::SEEK_* constants will be unavailable).
--disable-mpi-f77
Disable building the Fortran 77 MPI bindings.
--disable-mpi-f90
Disable building the Fortran 90 MPI bindings. Also related to the
--with-f90-max-array-dim and --with-mpi-f90-size options.
--with-mpi-f90-size=<SIZE>
Three sizes of the MPI F90 module can be built: trivial (only a
handful of MPI-2 F90-specific functions are included in the F90
module), small (trivial + all MPI functions that take no choice
buffers), and medium (small + all MPI functions that take 1 choice
buffer). This parameter is only used if the F90 bindings are
enabled.
--with-f90-max-array-dim=<DIM>
The F90 MPI bindings are strictly typed, even including the number of
dimensions for arrays for MPI choice buffer parameters. Open MPI
generates these bindings at compile time with a maximum number of
dimensions as specified by this parameter. The default value is 4.
--enable-mpirun-prefix-by-default
This option forces the "mpirun" command to always behave as if
"--prefix $prefix" was present on the command line (where $prefix is
the value given to the --prefix option to configure). This prevents
most rsh/ssh-based users from needing to modify their shell startup
files to set the PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH for Open MPI on remote
nodes. Note, however, that such users may still desire to set PATH
-- perhaps even in their shell startup files -- so that executables
such as mpicc and mpirun can be found without needing to type long
path names. --enable-orterun-prefix-by-default is a synonym for
this option.
--disable-shared
By default, libmpi is built as a shared library, and all components
are built as dynamic shared objects (DSOs). This switch disables
this default; it is really only useful when used with
--enable-static. Specifically, this option does *not* imply
--disable-shared; enabling static libraries and disabling shared
libraries are two independent options.
--enable-static
Build libmpi as a static library, and statically link in all
components. Note that this option does *not* imply
--disable-shared; enabling static libraries and disabling shared
libraries are two independent options.
There are many other options available -- see "./configure --help".
Changing the compilers that Open MPI uses to build itself uses the
standard Autoconf mechanism of setting special environment variables
either before invoking configure or on the configure command line.
The following environment variables are recognized by configure:
CC - C compiler to use
CFLAGS - Compile flags to pass to the C compiler
CPPFLAGS - Preprocessor flags to pass to the C compiler
CXX - C++ compiler to use
CXXFLAGS - Compile flags to pass to the C++ compiler
CXXCPPFLAGS - Preprocessor flags to pass to the C++ compiler
F77 - Fortran 77 compiler to use
FFLAGS - Compile flags to pass to the Fortran 77 compiler
FC - Fortran 90 compiler to use
FCFLAGS - Compile flags to pass to the Fortran 90 compiler
LDFLAGS - Linker flags to pass to all compilers
LIBS - Libraries to pass to all compilers (it is rarely
necessary for users to need to specify additional LIBS)
For example:
shell$ ./configure CC=mycc CXX=myc++ F77=myf77 F90=myf90 ...
It is required that the compilers specified be compile and link
compatible, meaning that object files created by one compiler must be
able to be linked with object files from the other compilers and
produce correctly functioning executables.
Open MPI supports all the "make" targets that are provided by GNU
Automake, such as:
all - build the entire Open MPI package
install - install Open MPI
uninstall - remove all traces of Open MPI from the $prefix
clean - clean out the build tree
Once Open MPI has been built and installed, it is safe to run "make
clean" and/or remove the entire build tree.
VPATH builds are fully supported.
Generally speaking, the only thing that users need to do to use Open
MPI is ensure that <prefix>/bin is in their PATH and <prefix>/lib is
in their LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Users may need to ensure to set the PATH
and LD_LIBRARY_PATH in their shell setup files (e.g., .bashrc, .cshrc)
so that rsh/ssh-based logins will be able to find the Open MPI
executables.
===========================================================================
Checking Your Open MPI Installation
-----------------------------------
The "ompi_info" command can be used to check the status of your Open
MPI installation (located in <prefix>/bin/ompi_info). Running it with
no arguments provides a summary of information about your Open MPI
installation.
Note that the ompi_info command is extremely helpful in determining
which components are installed as well as listing all the run-time
settable parameters that are available in each component (as well as
their default values).
The following options may be helpful:
--all Show a *lot* of information about your Open MPI
installation.
--parsable Display all the information in an easily
grep/cut/awk/sed-able format.
--param <framework> <component>
A <framework> of "all" and a <component> of "all" will
show all parameters to all components. Otherwise, the
parameters of all the components in a specific framework,
or just the parameters of a specific component can be
displayed by using an appropriate <framework> and/or
<component> name.
Changing the values of these parameters is explained in the "The
Modular Component Architecture (MCA)" section, below.
===========================================================================
Compiling Open MPI Applications
-------------------------------
Open MPI provides "wrapper" compilers that should be used for
compiling MPI applications:
C: mpicc
C++: mpiCC (or mpic++ if your filesystem is case-insensitive)
Fortran 77: mpif77
Fortran 90: mpif90
For example:
shell$ mpicc hello_world_mpi.c -o hello_world_mpi -g
shell$
All the wrapper compilers do is add a variety of compiler and linker
flags to the command line and then invoke a back-end compiler. To be
specific: the wrapper compilers do not parse source code at all; they
are solely command-line manipulators, and have nothing to do with the
actual compilation or linking of programs. The end result is an MPI
executable that is properly linked to all the relevant libraries.
===========================================================================
Running Open MPI Applications
-----------------------------
Open MPI supports both mpirun and mpiexec (they are exactly
equivalent). For example:
shell$ mpirun -np 2 hello_world_mpi
or
shell$ mpiexec -np 1 hello_world_mpi : -np 1 hello_world_mpi
are equivalent. Some of mpiexec's switches (such as -host and -arch)
are not yet functional, although they will not error if you try to use
them.
The rsh launcher accepts a -hostfile parameter (the option
"-machinefile" is equivalent); you can specify a -hostfile parameter
indicating an standard mpirun-style hostfile (one hostname per line):
shell$ mpirun -hostfile my_hostfile -np 2 hello_world_mpi
If you intend to run more than one process on a node, the hostfile can
use the "slots" attribute. If "slots" is not specified, a count of 1
is assumed. For example, using the following hostfile:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
node1.example.com
node2.example.com
node3.example.com slots=2
node4.example.com slots=4
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
shell$ mpirun -hostfile my_hostfile -np 8 hello_world_mpi
will launch MPI_COMM_WORLD rank 0 on node1, rank 1 on node2, ranks 2
and 3 on node3, and ranks 4 through 7 on node4.
Other starters, such as the batch scheduling environments, do not
require hostfiles (and will ignore the hostfile if it is supplied).
They will also launch as many processes as slots have been allocated
by the scheduler if no "-np" argument has been provided. For example,
running an interactive SLURM job with 8 processors:
shell$ srun -n 8 -A
shell$ mpirun a.out
The above command will launch 8 copies of a.out in a single
MPI_COMM_WORLD on the processors that were allocated by SLURM.
Note that the values of component parameters can be changed on the
mpirun / mpiexec command line. This is explained in the section
below, "The Modular Component Architecture (MCA)".
===========================================================================
The Modular Component Architecture (MCA)
The MCA is the backbone of Open MPI -- most services and functionality
are implemented through MCA components. Here is a list of all the
component frameworks in Open MPI:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MPI component frameworks:
-------------------------
allocator - Memory allocator
bml - BTL management layer
btl - MPI point-to-point byte transfer layer, used for MPI
point-to-point messages on some types of networks
coll - MPI collective algorithms
io - MPI-2 I/O
mpool - Memory pooling
mtl - Matching transport layer, used for MPI point-to-point
messages on some types of networks
osc - MPI-2 one-sided communications
pml - MPI point-to-point management layer
rcache - Memory registration cache
topo - MPI topology routines
Back-end run-time environment component frameworks:
---------------------------------------------------
errmgr - RTE error manager
gpr - General purpose registry
iof - I/O forwarding
ns - Name server
odls - OpenRTE daemon local launch subsystem
oob - Out of band messaging
pls - Process launch system
ras - Resource allocation system
rds - Resource discovery system
rmaps - Resource mapping system
rmgr - Resource manager
rml - RTE message layer
schema - Name schemas
sds - Startup / discovery service
smr - State-of-health monitoring subsystem
Miscellaneous frameworks:
-------------------------
backtrace - Debugging call stack backtrace support
maffinity - Memory affinity
memory - Memory subsystem hooks
memcpy - Memopy copy support
memory - Memory management hooks
paffinity - Processor affinity
timer - High-resolution timers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each framework typically has one or more components that are used at
run-time. For example, the btl framework is used by MPI to send bytes
across underlying networks. The tcp btl, for example, sends messages
across TCP-based networks; the gm btl sends messages across GM
Myrinet-based networks.
Each component typically has some tunable parameters that can be
changed at run-time. Use the ompi_info command to check a component
to see what its tunable parameters are. For example:
shell$ ompi_info --param btl tcp
shows all the parameters (and default values) for the tcp btl
component.
These values can be overridden at run-time in several ways. At
run-time, the following locations are examined (in order) for new
values of parameters:
1. <prefix>/etc/openmpi-mca-params.conf
This file is intended to set any system-wide default MCA parameter
values -- it will apply, by default, to all users who use this Open
MPI installation. The default file that is installed contains many
comments explaining its format.
2. $HOME/.openmpi/mca-params.conf
If this file exists, it should be in the same format as
<prefix>/etc/openmpi-mca-params.conf. It is intended to provide
per-user default parameter values.
3. environment variables of the form OMPI_MCA_<name> set equal to a
<value>
Where <name> is the name of the parameter. For example, set the
variable named OMPI_MCA_btl_tcp_frag_size to the value 65536
(Bourne-style shells):
shell$ OMPI_MCA_btl_tcp_frag_size=65536
shell$ export OMPI_MCA_btl_tcp_frag_size
4. the mpirun command line: --mca <name> <value>
Where <name> is the name of the parameter. For example:
shell$ mpirun --mca btl_tcp_frag_size 65536 -np 2 hello_world_mpi
These locations are checked in order. For example, a parameter value
passed on the mpirun command line will override an environment
variable; an environment variable will override the system-wide
defaults.
===========================================================================
Common Questions
----------------
Many common questions about building and using Open MPI are answered
on the FAQ:
http://www.open-mpi.org/faq/
===========================================================================
Got more questions?
-------------------
Found a bug? Got a question? Want to make a suggestion? Want to
contribute to Open MPI? Please let us know!
User-level questions and comments should generally be sent to the
user's mailing list (users@open-mpi.org). Because of spam, only
subscribers are allowed to post to this list (ensure that you
subscribe with and post from *exactly* the same e-mail address --
joe@example.com is considered different than
joe@mycomputer.example.com!). Visit this page to subscribe to the
user's list:
http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/users
Developer-level bug reports, questions, and comments should generally
be sent to the developer's mailing list (devel@open-mpi.org). Please
do not post the same question to both lists. As with the user's list,
only subscribers are allowed to post to the developer's list. Visit
the following web page to subscribe:
http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/devel
When submitting bug reports to either list, be sure to include as much
extra information as possible. This web page details all the
information that we request in order to provide assistance:
http://www.open-mpi.org/community/help/
Make today an Open MPI day!
