The two params are the result of user requests for two command line options: 
—oversubscribe and —no-oversubscribe. These were created for people working in 
environments where the system admin set a default one way or the other, and the 
user wanted to override it. The specific request was for a simple command line 
option - i.e., not an MCA param - for ease of use. As we lack a mechanism for 
correlating multiple command line options to a single MCA param, we wound up 
with two of them.

Your conflicted sample is the equivalent of “mpirun —oversubscribe 
—no-oversubscribe …” which clearly makes no sense - hence the error message.

HTH
Ralph

> On Apr 18, 2019, at 12:57 AM, Steffen Christgau <christ...@cs.uni-potsdam.de> 
> wrote:
> 
> On 17/04/2019 16.51, Jeff Squyres (jsquyres) via users wrote:
>>> On Apr 17, 2019, at 3:38 AM, Steffen Christgau 
>>> <christ...@cs.uni-potsdam.de> wrote:
>>> was configured with nothing more than a --prefix and
>>> --enable-mpi-fortran. I checked for updates and it appears that there
>>> was an issue until 4.0.1 with oversubscription. The changelog states
>>> 
>>>> - Fix a problem with the ORTE rmaps_base_oversubscribe MCA paramater.
>>> 
>>> Using --mca rmaps_base_oversubscribe 1 on the command line works with
>>> the 4.0.1 version. I added an entry in the openmpi-mca-params.conf file
>>> and I can now use over-subscribing calls of mpirun without any
>>> additional arguments aside from the number of processes.
>> 
>> Excellent!  Glad that v4.0.1 fixed the issue for you.
> 
> Thanks for fixing the mca param issue in 4.0.1. ;-)
> 
> However, I observed two things while struggling with that problem
> 
> 1) The FAQ #24 on "Running MPI Jobs"
> (https://www.open-mpi.org/faq/?category=running#oversubscribing) appears
> to be incorrect on the oversubscribing matter. If I follow the first
> example and without any MCA parameter configured I still get the "There
> are not enough slots available in the system..." error message with
> 4.0.1. The entry indicates that this should work. Maybe a hint on the
> rmaps MCA param (which one? see below) would be helpful to other users.
> 
> 2) The MCA parameters rmaps_base_no_oversubscribe and
> rmaps_base_oversubscribe have nearly the same meaning. At least to me,
> it appears that one is the negation of the other (from ompi_info,
> emphasizes mine):
> 
> rmaps_base_no_oversubscribe: "If true, then _do not allow_
> oversubscription of nodes - mpirun will return an error if there aren't
> enough nodes to launch all processes without oversubscribing"
> 
> rmaps_base_oversubscribe: "If true, then _allow_ oversubscription of
> nodes and overloading of processing elements"
> 
> So if I have base_oversubscribe set to true ("I want nodes to be
> oversubscribed") and no_oversubscribe set to true as well ("No, please
> don't oversubscribe nodes") then I won't get oversubscription. In fact,
> 4.0.1's mpirun tell me with the above setting:
> 
> $ mpirun -n 8 --mca rmaps_base_no_oversubscribe 1 --mca
> rmaps_base_oversubscribe 1 hostname
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Conflicting directives for mapping policy are causing the policy
> to be redefined:
> 
> New policy:   oversubscribe
> Prior policy:  BYSOCKET:NOOVERSUBSCRIBE
> 
> Please check that only one policy is defined.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The message makes sense, since the MCA param values are conflicting
> 
> The other way around:
> 
> $ mpirun -n 8 --mca rmaps_base_no_oversubscribe 0 --mca
> rmaps_base_oversubscribe 0 hostname
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> There are not enough slots available in the system to satisfy the 8 slots
> ....
> 
> Still makes sense, since the oversubscribe MCA value prevents
> oversubscription.
> 
> Does that mean, in the end, one has to configure both variables with the
> correct meanings (one must the inverse of the other) to achieve the
> intended effect? What is the rationale behind this (if any)? Is
> rmaps_base_no_oversubscribe something like a safeguard?
> 
> Regards, Steffen
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> users@lists.open-mpi.org
> https://lists.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo/users


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