[Beowulf] [newbie question] Does HPL have to be installed on every node in the cluster?

[Gus Correa]

On 03/27/2014 08:40 AM, Perry Cate wrote:> I am trying to benchmark my 
Rocks Linux cluster with Linpack. I followed
 > this guide:
 > 
http://frankinformation.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/installing-linpack-benchmark-hpl-on-a-rocks-cluster/
 >
 > And have hpl successfully installed on my frontend node-when the
 > frontend is the only computer in the machines file, the program runs
 > fine. When I try to run it on some compute nodes by adding them to the
 > machines file, mpirun reports that it "was unable to launch the
 > specified application as it could not find an executable"
 >
 > I'm sure I'm probably doing something wrong here, but does this mean
 > that I have to manually install HPL on all of the compute nodes, or I'm
 > just not starting it correctly?
 >
 > I appreciate your help...
 >
 >

On 03/27/2014 06:52 PM, Adam DeConinck wrote:
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>
> Hi Perry,
>
> When you run an MPI program on a cluster, the executable usually needs
> to be visible in the same location on all the nodes. This might mean
> installing the application on each node, but for many clusters it just
> means putting the executable on a network filesystem which is visible to
> all the nodes.
>
> So for example if /home is an NFS filesystem mounted on all the nodes,
> you should be able to run a binary under /home across the nodes with MPI.
> I don't have any experience with ROCKS so I don't know if it sets up an NFS
> filesystem by default.
>
> If you don't want a shared filesystem, you can install the app separately
> on each node instead.
>
> Adam
>
Hi Perry

Adding to Adam's comments:

On Rocks clusters the standard NFS directory shared across the nodes
that is meant to install software applications for general use
is /share/apps.
You could install HPL in, say, /share/apps/hpl, for instance,
specially if it is meant for general use.

The home directories are also NFS shares, so an alternative could be
/home/your_username/hpl, say, if it is only for your own use.
This seems to be what your web site guide recommends.

I'd suggest that you first try to run some very simple mpi program,
to test MPI functionality, before you go for HPL.
The OpenMPI distribution has a great trio for these tests:
hello_c.c, ring_c.c, and connectivity_c.c in the "examples" directory,
if you downloaded the source tarball. MPICH has cpi.c,
which will also work.
However, you can even run "hostname" on all nodes at once
under mpiexec for a quick test.

Also, if the executable (say, hpl.x),
is installed in an NFS share, as it seems to be,
make sure the directory is properly mounted on all nodes.
For instance, run "(hostname;ls -l /home/your_name/hpl/hpl.x)"
with tentakel, pdsh, or even with mpiexec using all nodes.
Check the output.

Not sure how Rocks handle your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
but if you have trouble with them
you may need to add something like this to your ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH=/opt/openmpi/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/openmpi/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Likewise, you may need to add something similar to your PATH to point to
wherever HPL is, or use its full path name instead on the
mpiexec command line.

I hope this helps,
Gus Correa