Multiple Processor Runs on the OBCP Cluster
Multiple Processor Runs on the OBCP Cluster
This section of the wiki is designed to help a user run programs using multiple processors through a Message Passing Interface (MPI) on the OBCP cluster. All actions on the cluster require a user account. Send any requests for a new user account to Joe Cora.
If you are having trouble connecting to the OBCP cluster, visit the Accessing the OBCP Cluster page.
Multiple Processors with MPI
Background
Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a cross platform interface standard for spawning multiple parallel jobs on a number of remote or local multiprocessor machines. Since MPI is a protocol and not a program, there are many different implementations of MPI. On the OBCP cluster, OpenMPI is used to handle MPI functionality and requires SSH to spawn additional processes.
Setting Up SSH for MPI
For some background information or additional OpenMPI troubleshooting for using MPI, visit setting up the SSH keys on the OpenMPI website.
- Begin by generating an authenication key for SSH connections by typing the command below. When prompted, provide your key password. This is NOT the same as your login password, and this value may be blank.
- ssh-keygen -t dsa
- Make sure that the SSH agent is returning a value (e.g. Agent pid 25099) by typing the command below. Make sure to use the grave accent ` and not a single-quote character.
- eval `ssh-agent`
3) ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa
4) cat $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
Add MPI paths to your bash resource file:
1) Open terminal and type gedit $HOME/.bashrc
2) Near the top of the after after any preceding hashes (#), add the lines:
- Add mpi to the path and docs to manpath
export PATH=/usr/local/mpich/bin:$PATH export MANPATH=/usr/local/mpich/man:$MANPATH
