Jeffrey A Cummings wrote:
Thanks for all the good replies on this thread. I don't know if I'll be
able to make a dent in the corporate IT bureaucracy but I'm going to try.
From: Prentice Bisbal <prent...@ias.edu>
To: Open MPI Users <us...@open-mpi.org>
Date: 02/02/2011 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: [OMPI users] How closely tied is a specific release
of OpenMPI to the host operating system and other system software?
Sent by: users-boun...@open-mpi.org
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Jeffrey A Cummings wrote:
> I use OpenMPI on a variety of platforms: stand-alone servers running
> Solaris on sparc boxes and Linux (mostly CentOS) on AMD/Intel boxes,
> also Linux (again CentOS) on large clusters of AMD/Intel boxes. These
> platforms all have some version of the 1.3 OpenMPI stream. I recently
> requested an upgrade on all systems to 1.4.3 (for production work) and
> 1.5.1 (for experimentation). I'm getting a lot of push back from the
> SysAdmin folks claiming that OpenMPI is closely intertwined with the
> specific version of the operating system and/or other system software
> (i.e., Rocks on the clusters). I need to know if they are telling me
> the truth or if they're just making excuses to avoid the work. To state
> my question another way: Apparently each release of Linux and/or Rocks
> comes with some version of OpenMPI bundled in. Is it dangerous in some
> way to upgrade to a newer version of OpenMPI? Thanks in advance for any
> insight anyone can provide.
>
> - Jeff
>
Jeff,
OpenMPI is more or less a user-space program, and isn't that tightly
coupled to the OS at all. As long as the OS has the correct network
drivers (ethernet, IB, or other), that's all OpenMPI needs to do it's
job. In fact, you can install it yourself in your own home directory (if
your home directory is shared amongst the cluster nodes you want to
use), and run it from there - no special privileges needed.
I have many different versions of OpenMPI installed on my systems,
without a problem.
As a system administrator responsible for maintaining OpenMPI on several
clusters, it sounds like one of two things:
1. Your system administrators really don't know what they're talking
about, or,
2. They're lying to you to avoid doing work.
--
Prentice
Jeff
Worst scenario, you can install OpenMPI yourself, from the source
tarball, in a subdirectory of your ${HOME}, for instance.
You would just need adjust your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
Gus Correa
