[MPICH] MPICH2 ports and firewall issues - limit port range ?

[Ralph M. Butler]

Hi Martin:

The MPICH_PORT_RANGE is the right way to go.  However, you are right that mpdcheck does
not know about the notion of a port range.  So,  I would say if you disabled the firewall and gotten
everything to work, i.e. mpds on multiple hosts, etc.), then you may just want to re-enable the firewall,
set MPICH_PORT_RANGE, and try mpd directly.

--ralph

On Wed, 14 Jun 2006, Martin Schwinzerl wrote:

> Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:18:31 +0200
> From: Martin Schwinzerl <martin.schwinzerl at stud.uni-graz.at>
> To: mpich-discuss at mcs.anl.gov
> Subject: [MPICH] MPICH2 ports and firewall issues - limit port range ?
> 
> I have some problems regarding the usage of MPICH2 and would be very 
> grateful, if someone here
> could help me. Although I've gathered some experience with MPICH2 while using 
> it at my local network,
> I've only a limited understanding of ther internal workings of MPI CH2 (and 
> English isn't my mother tongue either),
> so please bear with me :-)
>
> I try to setup MPICH2 (ver. 1.0.3)  in an existing network consisting of 
> several Linux machines (OpenSuSE 10.0)
> using the Intel Compilers (C/C++ and Fortran 9.0). While the installation 
> process itself turned out
> to be straighforward as usual, I ran into problems bringing up a ring of 
> computers using the first
> mpdboot example in the install manual.
>
> (mpdboot -n 4 -f mpd.hosts
> mpdtrace
> mpdallexit
> )
>
> After some troubleshooting (several attempts to connect computers to 
> eachother using the mpdcheck program
> and temporary disableing the firewalls of the computers in question), the 
> local firewalls turned out to be the problem,
> since they block all incoming traffic on all ports exept ssh and http.
>
> Since providing all port information at startup of the mpd's (and enabling 
> the specific ports in the firewall rules)
> is definitly not suitable for our needs, and enabling all ports in bulk (even 
> if, for example, they are restricted to the needed applications)
> for traffic between the machines in our local network is
> according to our system administrator a big no-no, I wanted to ask if there 
> is some way to limit the port range
> which MPICH uses , so that we can at least retreat to enable a distinct block 
> of ports for our cluster. I've so far
> tried to use the MPICH_PORT_RANGE environment variable to accomplish this
>
> (e.g. mas at thph037214:~> export MPICH_PORT_RANGE="8000..9000")
>
> but at least mpdcheck wasn't able to limit itself to ports in this range
>
> mas at thph037214:~> mpdcheck -s
> server listening at INADDR_ANY on: thph037214 1024
>
> Any information / suggestions / hints how to limit the mpich2 programs to 
> certain range of ports
> (or any corrections for things I'm currently doing wrong) would be very 
> welcome and appreciated!
>
> Thank you very much for your time & efforts ,
>
> regards
>
> Martin Schwinzerl
>
> ----
>
> Martin Schwinzerl
> Institute of Physics
> University Graz
> Austria
>
> http://physik.uni-graz.at/~mas
>
> "Tomorrow is going to be wonderful, because tonight, I do not understand 
> anything"
> Niels Bohr
>
>
>