[Pympi-users] pyMPI tested with python 2.4 on Sun

[Julian C. <rjc...@cs...>]

Long post regarding building pyMPI on solaris. Last week Pat Miller (via
email) suggested aiming for a stable release of pyMPI to coincide with
python 2.4. This would allow new users to install a version known to work
with 2.4 across a variety of platforms. To this end I decided to test pyMPI
against 2.4 on Solaris.

Here's the summary in case anyone is interested:

This is for building pyMPI 2.1 with python 2.4 (30Nov04) on Solaris 2.8.
Everything was installed into my home directories, not to /usr/bin etc.
1. Building Python 2.4 was easily the hardest part. I could not get
configure, make to run with gcc, so used the Sun CC compiler instead. I've
had zero problems with gcc and previous versions of python on Sun( except
for TCL/TK which gets me every time). If you have similar problems try
./configure --without-gcc. Also be aware that you need to separately change
the linker command as well to cc, otherwise it will attempt to use g++.
2. I used mpich 1.2.6 for the mpi part. This built very easily, with no
problems that I remember. I also used the Sun CC compiler for this. I tested
it with "mpirun -np 4 cpi" (cpi is in examples/basic)
3. I downloaded pyMPI2.1b4 and also configured it using
./configure --without-gcc. I had some problems with the pyMPI configure as
follows:
a) I had not done make install for python, so the python-2.4/lib dir did not
exist (used in $PYLIBDIR for checking if site-packages exists). Fixed after
installing python properly.
b) pyMPI configure expected to find config.c in the main python-2.4 dir. The
python configure script actually moved this file to the Modules/ dir. Had to
copy config.c back from Modules/ into main python dir
c) Had to move pyconfig.c into Include/, because that's where python.h etc
needed it for compilation during the configure test of h files.
The actual error from config.log for the record is:

#include <Python.h>
configure:5259: result: no
configure:5263: checking Python.h presence
configure:5270:
/home/jcook/mpich/mpich-1.2.6/bin/mpicc -E -w -I/home/jcook/python/Python-2.
4/Include conftest.c
"/home/jcook/python/Python-2.4/Include/Python.h", line 8: cannot find
include file: "pyconfig.h"
"/home/jcook/python/Python-2.4/Include/pyport.h", line 4: cannot find
include file: "pyconfig.h"

4. The actual make was error free. The only step that appears to be missing
is the setup.py step i.e. "python setup.py build" . I could not see the
setup.py file anywhere? There is a softload_setup.py file, but I don t know
what it does.

5. I tested it on a 4 cpu server. mpi had autogenerated a machines.solaris
file for me. Everything ran fine for non-interactive tests e.g.

ale{jcook}60% mpirun -np 4 /home/jcook/python/Python-2.4/bin/pyMPI pyPI.py
Try computing with 1 rectangles CPU's: 4
0.0
0.0
0.0
Error is 3.2
Try computing with 2 rectangles CPU's: 4
... etc etc

6. To run interactive, you have to configure pyMPI using
"./configure --without-gcc --with-isatty". This will allow you to get to the
python prompt. Notice in this release that you get an unintended extra new
line, which is a known bug:

ale{jcook}66% mpirun -np 4 /home/jcook/python/Python-2.4/bin/pyMPI
Python 2.4 (pyMPI 2.1b4) on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Python 2.4 (pyMPI 2.1b4) on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Python 2.4 (pyMPI 2.1b4) on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Python 2.4 (pyMPI 2.1b4) on sunos5
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>
import mpi
>>>
print mpi.rank,mpi.size
0 4
1 4
3 4
2 4
>>>
The only irritating issue here is the 4x credits, which I wasn't expecting.
This would obviously be a larger problem when you go to 50 nodes. If anyone
knows a fix for this let me know.
Julian Cook