[mpich-discuss] Mpich2 - in Red Hat 7.3

[Gus Correa]

On 10/05/2012 03:35 PM, Pavan Balaji wrote:
>
> On 10/05/2012 02:33 PM, Sandra Guija wrote:
>> If I decide to setup my cluster so that each node has their own mpich2
>> binaries,
>> it will be ok if I installed just in one and the copied the
>> mpich2-install directory to the other node?
>> Or I need to install idnivdually
>
> It's theoretically OK to just copy the install directory, but you have
> to be very careful to maintain correct permissions, and directory paths,
> etc. This is often a cause of many errors.
>
> -- Pavan
>

Hi Sandra

As Pavan said, you can copy over the install directory to the
nodes, with caution to the details that Pavan pointed out.

Also, make sure all computers have the same architecture also,
i.e., say all 32-bits (x86), or all 64-bits (x86_64).

However, I believe it is much simpler for you to install mpich2 only
in the cluster's head node, on a NFS (network file system)
shared directory.
I.e., install in a directory on the
head node that is exported to the compute nodes
and mounted on the compute nodes.
Typically people create a directory only for this purpose,
called, say, /shared, and you could install mpich2,
say, in /shared/mpich2 or similar.

The head node is the NFS server, the compute nodes are
the NFS clients.

This will require a single install of mpich2.
You will avoid the hassle of copying and maintaining
exact replicas on the compute nodes.
In small clusters this is typically what people do.

NFS is not much of an mpich2 list issue, but anyways ...
First check if you have nfs packages (if you're on Fedora use yum)
'yum list |grep nfs'
and install the packages with 'yum install' if you don't have them.
Second if you already have NFS packages, check if they're
running on the head node:
'service nfs status'.
If NFS is not running, try
'chkconfig --list |grep nfs'
If NFS is turned off, turn it on, and start the service:
'chkconfig nfs on'
'service nfs start'

If you are not familiar to NFS,
and how to export and mount a directory,
here is the Linux NFS 'HowTo':

http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/

I hope this helps,
Gus Correa