[petsc-users] norm of KSPBuildResidual does not match norm computed from KSPBuildSolution

Moral Sanchez, Elena Elena.Moral.Sanchez at ipp.mpg.de
Tue Nov 4 03:06:07 CST 2025


Dear Barry,

Thanks for the fast answer. Unfortunately in my case the discrepancy is huge. With the flags

 -ksp_monitor_true_residual -ksp_norm_type unpreconditioned

this is the output:

  0 KSP unpreconditioned resid norm 5.568889644229e-01 true resid norm 5.568889644229e-01 ||r(i)||/||b|| 1.000000000000e+00
  1 KSP unpreconditioned resid norm 2.831772665189e-01 true resid norm 2.831772665189e-01 ||r(i)||/||b|| 5.084986139245e-01
  2 KSP unpreconditioned resid norm 1.875950094147e-01 true resid norm 1.875950094147e-01 ||r(i)||/||b|| 3.368625011435e-01

and this is the output of my own monitor function:

Iter 0/10 | res = 5.57e-01/1.00e-08 | 0.0 s
difference KSPBuildSolution and u: 0.0
UNPRECONDITIONED norm:  0.5568889644229376
PRECONDITIONED norm:  2.049041078011257
KSPBuildResidual 2-norm: 0.5568889644229299
difference KSPBuildResidual and b-A(KSPBuildSolution): 6.573603152700697e-13

Iter 1/10 | res = 2.83e-01/1.00e-08 | 0.0 s
difference KSPBuildSolution and u: 0.0
UNPRECONDITIONED norm:  0.7661983589104541
PRECONDITIONED norm:  2.7387602134717137
KSPBuildResidual 2-norm: 0.2831772665189212
difference KSPBuildResidual and b-A(KSPBuildSolution): 0.1700718741085172

Iter 2/10 | res = 1.88e-01/1.00e-08 | 0.0 s
difference KSPBuildSolution and u: 0.0
UNPRECONDITIONED norm:  0.7050518160900253
PRECONDITIONED norm:  2.421773833445645
KSPBuildResidual 2-norm: 0.18759500941469456
difference KSPBuildResidual and b-A(KSPBuildSolution): 0.19327058976599623

Here u is the vector in the KSPSolve.

After the first iteration, the residual computed from KSPBuildSolution and the residual from KSPBuildResidual diverge. They are the same when I run the same code without preconditioner.

Another observation is that after convergence (wrt. unpreconditioned norm == 2-norm of KSPBuildResidual) the solution with and without preconditioner looks quite different. How is this possible if my preconditioner is SPD?


By the way, where can I find your implementation of "My monitor" in src/snes/tutorials/ex5.c? I tried to look at the Gitlab repository but could not find it.

Thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Elena






On 11/4/25 03:01, Barry Smith wrote:
    0 KSP unpreconditioned resid norm 1.265943996096e+00 true resid norm 1.265943996096e+00 ||r(i)||/||b|| 1.000000000000e+00
My monitor 0 1.265943996096e+00
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