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

[Martin Schwinzerl]

Ralph M. Butler wrote:
> 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
>
>
Thank you for your quick reply !

One of the problems I have is, that I'm not sure wheter the 
MPICH_PORT_RANGE variable is treated
correctly (or better phrased : the way I would expect it), because of 
things like the following example :

mas at thph037214:~> export MPICH_PORT_RANGE="8000..9000"
mas at thph037214:~> mpd --echo &
[1] 4986
mas at thph037214:~> 1090
1090

mas at thph037214:~> mpdallexit
[1]+  Done                    mpd --echo
mas at thph037214:~>

Consequently, the environment variable seems to have no countable effect 
on the behaviour of
mpdboot, at least I wasn't able to bring one (quite trivial) ring of two 
computers up and
running.

I've also experimented with the --listenport option (and consequently 
with the --host and --port options
at a remote machine ) to boot the ring manually. While I was able to 
manually boot the ring  (cf below),
and mpdtrace worked like expected, the execution of the example program 
cpi (LOCATION_OF_MPICH2/examples/cpi)
via mpiexec resulted in a timeout (the programm worked for the given 
setup like a charm, when the firewall was turned of)

Example listing :

Machine A
mas at thph037214:~> export MPICH_PORT_RANGE="8000..9000"
mas at thph037214:~> mpd --listenport=8100 &
[1] 5220
mas at thph037214:~> mpdtrace
thph037214
thph037217
mas at thph037214:~> mpdallexit
[1]+  Done                    mpd --listenport=8100


Machine B
mas at thph037217:~> export MPICH_PORT_RANGE="8000..9000"
mas at thph037217:~> mpd --port=8100 --host=thph037214 &
[1] 26597
mas at thph037217:~> mpdallexit
[1]+  Done                    mpd --port=8100 --host=thph037214

Again, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions concerning my problem.

 Best Regards
 Martin Schwinzerl

PS.: As a related question : Is there any documentation available 
(besides the user manual and the installation manual),
which I can turn to to learn more about the internals of mpich and/or 
the mpi standard ? I feel terrible stranded with my
very limited knowledge at this stage. Thanks in advance !

----

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