13 May 2013

413. Povray 3.7-rc7 on debian wheezy

Update 15/5/2013: Seems like povray has been removed from debian! http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=povray This means it's even safer to remove libjpeg62

Original post:
The latest beta version of povray, povray 3.7-rc7 will only build if you don't have libjpeg62 installed. Luckily, not much seems to rely on libjpeg62 anymore other than the debian version of povray.

If you want both the debian version and this version of povray installed at the same time, use a chroot environment to build.

The main reason for wanting to build your own povray 3.7 is that it supports parallel processing and so can speed up rendering significantly.

Note: you can compile povray 3.6 using the same instructions. Download it from here: http://www.povray.org/redirect/www.povray.org/ftp/pub/povray/Official/Unix/povray-3.6.tar.bz2

Building povray 3.7-rc7
sudo mkdir /opt/povray
sudo chown $USER /opt/povray 

mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
sudo apt-get autoremove libjpeg62
sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev libpng-dev libjpeg8-dev libtiff-dev build-essential checkinstall libsdl-dev

wget http://www.povray.org/redirect/www.povray.org/beta/source/povray-3.7.0.RC7.tar.bz2
tar xvf povray-3.7.0.RC7.tar.bz2
cd povray-3.7.0.RC7/
./configure --prefix=/opt/povray --program-suffix=_3.7 COMPILED_BY="me@here
make 
sudo checkinstall
0 - Maintainer: [ root@boron ] 1 - Summary: [ povray 3.7-rc7 ] 2 - Name: [ povray ] 3 - Version: [ 3.7.0.RC7 ] 4 - Release: [ 1 ] 5 - License: [ GPL ] 6 - Group: [ checkinstall ] 7 - Architecture: [ amd64 ] 8 - Source location: [ povray-3.7.0.RC7 ] 9 - Alternate source location: [ ] 10 - Requires: [ ] 11 - Provides: [ povray ] 12 - Conflicts: [ ] 13 - Replaces: [ ]
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/povray/bin' >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc

And that's it. Note that we added a suffix to the binary, so you'll have to call it with 'povray_3.7' instead of just 'povray'.

10 May 2013

412. system-config-samba on debian

I don't use samba anymore, but I do remember that Ubuntu had a very simple tool for setting up samba shares (turns out it's by redhat, not canonical). While it might be better in the long run to craft your own smb.conf, system-config-samba is convenient for quickly setting things up.

Anyway, someone at forums.debian.net asked for it, which got me thinking about making a post:

sudo apt-get install build-essential gfortran checkinstall python-all-dev cdbs debhelper quilt intltool python-central rarian-compat pkg-config gnome-doc-utils samba python-libuser libuser1 python-glade2
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/system-config-samba_1.2.63.orig.tar.gz
tar xvf system-config-samba_1.2.63.orig.tar.gz
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5.diff.gz
gunzip system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5.diff.gz
patch -p0 < system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5.diff
cd system-config-samba-1.2.63/
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us
sudo dpkg -i ../system-config-samba_1.2.63-0ubuntu5_all.deb
sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf
gksu system-config-samba

And here we go:
i.e. it at the very least reads my /etc/samba/smb.conf accurately.

To make system-config-samba show up in your gnome menus, add it via Main Menu. Make sure to include gksu in the command to launch it.


411. Attempt at OPENMP enabled NWChem 6.1.1 -- not successful...

Update 4 June 2013:
I might return to this later and have a look at how to make the parallel executable in the bin/LINUX64 folder.

Original post:
This is another addition to my growing list over unsuccessful, abandoned or only partially successful builds.
(see e.g.
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/409-failed-attempt-at-compiling-gamess_10.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/409a-failed-attempt-at-compiling-gamess.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/compiling-dalton-qm-on-debian-in.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/quantum-espresso-on-rocks-543-centos-56.html)

In other words -- yes, it builds. But no, it is unusable.

I can build nwchem with openmp support, and it does run in parallel -- but the wall time is enormous since most of the time only a single thread is running.

Maybe someone will read this and see what's missing, or feel inspired to make their own attempt

What I did
ACML libraries were installed as shown in e.g. http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/409-failed-attempt-at-compiling-gamess_10.html

Nwchem was downloaded:
sudo mkdir /opt/nwchem
sudo chown $USER:$USER /opt/nwchem
cd /opt/nwchem
wget http://www.nwchem-sw.org/download.php?f=Nwchem-6.1.1-src.2012-06-27.tar.gz
tar xvf Nwchem-6.1.1-src.2012-06-27.tar.gz
cd nwchem-6.1.1-src/

Next I edited src/config/makefile.h
2363 ifdef OPTIMIZE 2364 FFLAGS = $(FOPTIONS) $(FOPTIMIZE) 2365 CFLAGS = $(COPTIONS) $(COPTIMIZE) -fopenmp 2366 else 2367 # Need FDEBUG after FOPTIONS on SOLARIS to correctly override optimization 2368 FFLAGS = $(FOPTIONS) $(FDEBUG) 2369 CFLAGS = $(COPTIONS) $(CDEBUG) -fopenmp 2370 endif 2371 INCLUDES = -I. $(LIB_INCLUDES) -I$(INCDIR) $(INCPATH) 2372 CPPFLAGS = $(INCLUDES) $(DEFINES) $(LIB_DEFINES) 2373 LDFLAGS = $(LDOPTIONS) -L$(LIBDIR) $(LIBPATH) 2374 LIBS = $(NW_MODULE_LIBS) $(CORE_LIBS) -lgomp 2375
I then built using the following build script:
export LARGE_FILES=TRUE export TCGRSH=/usr/bin/ssh export NWCHEM_TOP=`pwd` export NWCHEM_TARGET=LINUX64 export NWCHEM_MODULES="all" export PYTHONVERSION=2.7 export PYTHONHOME=/usr export BLASOPT="-L/opt/acml/acml5.3.1/gfortran64_fma4_mp_int64/lib -lacml_mp -lpthread" export USE_OPENMP=y export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/acml/acml5.3.1/gfortran64_fma4_mp_int64/lib" cd $NWCHEM_TOP/src make clean make nwchem_config make FC=gfortran 2> make.err 1>make.log cd $NWCHEM_TOP/contrib export FC=gfortran ./getmem.nwchem
So far so good.

Where it fails
A picture is probably in order:
Note that while this is a short run, it is perfectly representative of what I'm seeing with 'real' jobs too -- I get eight threads auto-spawning (as seen by top), but only one thread is active most of the time.

Basically, most of the time only one core is running at 100% (i.e. showing as 12.5 % here since I have 8 cores), with the other cores occasionally kicking in (the 'spikes').

The wall times is 63 seconds, and the 'cpu time' is 83.1 seconds. Ideally, for a fully parallel run the cpu time should be as close to the wall time multiplied with eight for a shared run like this (but is always smaller).

As a comparison, here's an mpi-enabled binary:
Here all cores are active over most of the (short) run. The cpu time was 9.9 seconds and the wall time 11.8 seconds. For an mpi run the wall time should be as close to the cpu time as possible (but is always larger)

So it's not particularly 'parallel' in the OMP case -- but I don't know why. Maybe nwchem 6.1.1 isn't quite ready for OMP yet? I've noticed that it's one of the areas where the upcoming release is supposed to have been improved.


'profiling' with sar -- how-to
sudo apt-get install syssstat

Edit /etc/default/sysstat:
8 # will be overwritten by debconf! 9 ENABLED="true" 10
sudo service sysstat restart

Before launching the run, set sar to run in another windows and collect data before immediately launching the run you want to monitor in a different window:

sar 1 180 >> run.log
collects data every 1 seconds and repeats it 180 times (i.e. 181 seconds) and stores the data in run.log.