FAQ:
Running MPI jobs

Table of contents:

1. What prerequisites are necessary for running an Open MPI job?
2. What ABI guarantees does Open MPI provide?
3. Do I need a common filesystem on all my nodes?
4. How do I add Open MPI to my PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH?
5. What if I can't modify my PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH?
6. How do I launch Open MPI parallel jobs?
7. How do I run a simple SPMD MPI job?
8. How do I run an MPMD MPI job?
9. How do I specify the hosts on which my MPI job runs?
10. I can run ompi_info and launch MPI jobs on a single host, but not across multiple hosts. Why?
11. How can I diagnose problems when running across multiple hosts?
12. When I build Open MPI with the Intel compilers, I get warnings about "orted" or my MPI application not finding libimf.so. What do I do?
13. When I build Open MPI with the PGI compilers, I get warnings about "orted" or my MPI application not finding libpgc.so. What do I do?
14. When I build Open MPI with the PathScale compilers, I get warnings about "orted" or my MPI application not finding libmv.so. What do I do?
15. Can I run non-MPI programs with mpirun / mpiexec?
16. Can I run GUI applications with Open MPI?
17. Can I run ncurses-based / curses-based / applications with funky input schemes with Open MPI?
18. What other options are available to mpirun?
19. How do I use the --hostfile option to mpirun?
20. How do I use the --host option to mpirun?
21. How do I control how my processes are scheduled across nodes?
22. I'm not using a hostfile. How are slots calculated?
23. Can I run multiple parallel processes on a uniprocessor machine?
24. Can I oversubscribe nodes (run more processes than processors)?
25. Can I force Agressive or Degraded performance modes?
26. How do I run with the TotalView parallel debugger?
27. How do I run with the DDT parallel debugger?
28. What launchers are available?
29. How do I specify to the rsh launcher to use rsh or ssh?
30. How do I run with the Slurm and PBS/Torque launchers?
31. Can I suspend and resume my MPI job?
32. How do I run with LoadLeveler?
33. How do I load libmpi at runtime?
34. What MPI environmental variables exist?
35. How do I get my MPI job to wireup its MPI connections right away?
36. What kind of CUDA support exists in Open MPI?
37. What are the Libfabric (OFI) components in Open MPI?
38. How can Open MPI communicate with Intel Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) based devices?

In general, Open MPI requires that its executables are in your PATH on every node that you will run on and if Open MPI was compiled as dynamic libraries (which is the default), the directory where its libraries are located must be in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH on every node.

Specifically, if Open MPI was installed with a prefix of /opt/openmpi, then the following should be in your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH

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PATH:            /opt/openmpi/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH: /opt/openmpi/lib

Depending on your environment, you may need to set these values in your shell startup files (e.g., .profile, .cshrc, etc.).

NOTE: There are exceptions to this rule — notably the --prefix option to mpirun.

See this FAQ entry for more details on how to add Open MPI to your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Additionally, Open MPI requires that jobs can be started on remote nodes without any input from the keyboard. For example, if using rsh or ssh as the remote agent, you must have your environment setup to allow execution on remote nodes without entering a password or passphrase.

Open MPI's versioning and ABI scheme is described here, but is summarized here in this FAQ entry for convenience.

Open MPI provided forward application binary interface (ABI) compatibility for MPI applications starting with v1.3.2. Prior to that version, no ABI guarantees were provided.

NOTE: Prior to v1.3.2, subtle and strange failures are almost guaranteed to occur if applications were compiled and linked against shared libraries from one version of Open MPI and then run with another. The Open MPI team strongly discourages making any ABI assumptions before v1.3.2.

NOTE: ABI for the "use mpi" Fortran interface was inadvertantly broken in the v1.6.3 release, and was restored in the v1.6.4 release. Any Fortran applications that utilize the "use mpi" MPI interface that were compiled and linked against the v1.6.3 release will not be link-time compatible with other releases in the 1.5.x / 1.6.x series. Such applications remain source compatible, however, and can be recompiled/re-linked with other Open MPI releases.

Starting with v1.3.2, Open MPI provides forward ABI compatibility — with respect to the MPI API only — in all versions of a given feature release series and its corresponding super stable series. For example, on a single platform, an MPI application linked against Open MPI v1.3.2 shared libraries can be updated to point to the shared libraries in any successive v1.3.x or v1.4 release and still work properly (e.g., via the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable or other operating system mechanism).

For the v1.5 series, this means that all releases of v1.5.x and v1.6.x will be ABI compatible, per the above definition.

Open MPI reserves the right to break ABI compatibility at new feature release series. For example, the same MPI application from above (linked against Open MPI v1.3.2 shared libraries) will not work with Open MPI v1.5 shared libraries. Similarly, MPI applications compiled/linked against Open MPI 1.6.x will not be ABI compatible with Open MPI 1.7.x

No, but it certainly makes life easier if you do.

A common environment to run Open MPI is in a "Beowulf"-class or similar cluster (e.g., a bunch of 1U servers in a bunch of racks). Simply stated, Open MPI can run on a group of servers or workstations connected by a network. As mentioned above, there are several prerequisites, however (for example, you typically must have an account on all the machines, you can rsh or ssh between the nodes without using a password, etc.).

Regardless of whether Open MPI is installed on a shared / networked filesystem or independently on each node, it is usually easiest if Open MPI is available in the same filesystem location on every node. For example, if you install Open MPI to /opt/openmpi-5.0.6 on one node, ensure that it is available in /opt/openmpi-5.0.6 on all nodes.

This FAQ entry has a bunch more information about installation locations for Open MPI.

Open MPI must be able to find its executables in your PATH on every node (if Open MPI was compiled as dynamic libraries, then its library path must appear in LD_LIBRARY_PATH as well). As such, your configuration/initialization files need to add Open MPI to your PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH properly.

How to do this may be highly dependent upon your local configuration, so you may need to consult with your local system administrator. Some system administrators take care of these details for you, some don't. YMMV. Some common examples are included below, however.

You must have at least a minimum understanding of how your shell works to get Open MPI in your PATH / LD_LIBRARY_PATH properly. Note that Open MPI must be added to your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH in two situations: (1) when you login to an interactive shell, (2) and when you login to non-interactive shells on remote nodes.

• If (1) is not configured properly, executables like mpicc will not be found, and it is typically obvious what is wrong. The Open MPI executable directory can manually be added to the PATH, or the user's startup files can be modified such that the Open MPI executables are added to the PATH every login. This latter approach is preferred.

  All shells have some kind of script file that is executed at login time to set things like PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH and perform other environmental setup tasks. This startup file is the one that needs to be edited to add Open MPI to the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Consult the manual page for your shell for specific details (some shells are picky about the permissions of the startup file, for example). The table below lists some common shells and the startup files that they read/execute upon login:

  Shell	Interactive login startup file
  sh (Bourne shell, or bash named "sh")	.profile
  csh	.cshrc followed by .login
  tcsh	.tcshrc if it exists, .cshrc if it does not, followed by .login
  bash	.bash_profile if it exists, or .bash_login if it exists, or .profile if it exists (in that order). Note that some Linux distributions automatically come with .bash_profile scripts for users that automatically execute .bashrc as well. Consult the bash man page for more information.

• If (2) is not configured properly, executables like mpirun will not function properly, and it can be somewhat confusing to figure out (particularly for bash users).

  The startup files in question here are the ones that are automatically executed for a non-interactive login on a remote node (e.g., "rsh othernode ps"). Note that not all shells support this, and that some shells use different files for this than listed in (1). Some shells will supersede (2) with (1). That is, fulfilling (2) may automatically fulfill (1). The following table lists some common shells and the startup file that is automatically executed, either by Open MPI or by the shell itself:

  Shell	Non-interactive login startup file
  sh (Bourne or bash named "sh")	This shell does not execute any file automatically, so Open MPI will execute the .profile script before invoking Open MPI executables on remote nodes
  csh	.cshrc
  tcsh	.tcshrc if it exists, or .cshrc if it does not
  bash	.bashrc if it exists

There are some situations where you cannot modify the PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH — e.g., some ISV applications prefer to hide all parallelism from the user, and therefore do not want to make the user modify their shell startup files. Another case is where you want a single user to be able to launch multiple MPI jobs simultaneously, each with a different MPI implementation. Hence, setting shell startup files to point to one MPI implementation would be problematic.

In such cases, you have two options:

1. Use mpirun's --prefix command line option (described below).
2. Modify the wrapper compilers to include directives to include run-time search locations for the Open MPI libraries (see this FAQ entry)

mpirun's --prefix command line option takes as an argument the top-level directory where Open MPI was installed. While relative directory names are possible, they can become ambiguous depending on the job launcher used; using absolute directory names is strongly recommended.

For example, say that Open MPI was installed into /opt/openmpi-5.0.6. You would use the --prefix option like this:

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shell$ mpirun --prefix /opt/openmpi-5.0.6 -np 4 a.out

This will prefix the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH on both the local and remote hosts with /opt/openmpi-5.0.6/bin and /opt/openmpi-5.0.6/lib, respectively. This is usually unnecessary when using resource managers to launch jobs (e.g., Slurm, Torque, etc.) because they tend to copy the entire local environment — to include the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH — to remote nodes before execution. As such, if PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH are set properly on the local node, the resource manager will automatically propagate those values out to remote nodes. The --prefix option is therefore usually most useful in rsh or ssh-based environments (or similar).

Beginning with the 1.2 series, it is possible to make this the default behavior by passing to configure the flag --enable-mpirun-prefix-by-default. This will make mpirun behave exactly the same as "mpirun --prefix $prefix ...", where $prefix is the value given to --prefix in configure.

Finally, note that specifying the absolute pathname to mpirun is equivalent to using the --prefix argument. For example, the following is equivalent to the above command line that uses --prefix:

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shell$ /opt/openmpi-5.0.6/bin/mpirun -np 4 a.out

Similar to many MPI implementations, Open MPI provides the commands mpirun and mpiexec to launch MPI jobs. Several of the questions in this FAQ category deal with using these commands.

Note, however, that these commands are exactly identical. Specifically, they are symbolic links to a common back-end launcher command named orterun (Open MPI's run-time environment interaction layer is named the Open Run-Time Environment, or ORTE — hence orterun).

As such, the rest of this FAQ usually refers only to mpirun, even though the same discussions also apply to mpiexec and orterun (because they are all, in fact, the same command).

Open MPI provides both mpirun and mpiexec commands. A simple way to start a single program, multiple data (SPMD) application in parallel is:

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shell$ mpirun -np 4 my_parallel_application

This starts a four-process parallel application, running four copies of the executable named my_parallel_application.

The rsh starter component accepts the --hostfile (also known as --machinefile) option to indicate which hosts to start the processes on:

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shell$ cat my_hostfile
host01.example.com
host02.example.com
shell$ mpirun --hostfile my_hostfile -np 4 my_parallel_application

This command will launch one copy of my_parallel_application on each of host01.example.com and host02.example.com.

More information about the --hostfile option, and hostfiles in general, is available in this FAQ entry.

Note, however, that not all environments require a hostfile. For example, Open MPI will automatically detect when it is running in batch / scheduled environments (such as SGE, PBS/Torque, Slurm, and LoadLeveler), and will use host information provided by those systems.

Also note that if using a launcher that requires a hostfile and no hostfile is specified, all processes are launched on the local host.

Both the mpirun and mpiexec commands support multiple program, multiple data (MPMD) style launches, either from the command line or from a file. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 2 a.out : -np 2 b.out

This will launch a single parallel application, but the first two processes will be instances of the a.out executable, and the second two processes will be instances of the b.out executable. In MPI terms, this will be a single MPI_COMM_WORLD, but the a.out processes will be ranks 0 and 1 in MPI_COMM_WORLD, while the b.out processes will be ranks 2 and 3 in MPI_COMM_WORLD.

mpirun (and mpiexec) can also accept a parallel application specified in a file instead of on the command line. For example:

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shell$ mpirun --app my_appfile

where the file my_appfile contains the following:

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# Comments are supported; comments begin with #
# Application context files specify each sub-application in the
# parallel job, one per line.  The first sub-application is the 2
# a.out processes:
-np 2 a.out
# The second sub-application is the 2 b.out processes:
-np 2 b.out

This will result in the same behavior as running a.out and b.out from the command line.

Note that mpirun and mpiexec are identical in command-line options and behavior; using the above command lines with mpiexec instead of mpirun will result in the same behavior.

There are three general mechanisms:

1. The --hostfile option to mpirun. Use this option to specify a list of hosts on which to run. Note that for compatibility with other MPI implementations, --machinefile is a synonym for --hostfile. See this FAQ entry for more information about the --hostfile option.
2. The --host option to mpirun can be used to specify a list of hosts on which to run on the command line. See this FAQ entry for more information about the --host option.
3. If you are running in a scheduled environment (e.g., in a Slurm, Torque, or LSF job), Open MPI will automatically get the lists of hosts from the scheduler.

NOTE: The specification of hosts using any of the above methods has nothing to do with the network interfaces that are used for MPI traffic. The list of hosts is only used for specifying which hosts on which to launch MPI processes.

(You should probably also see this FAQ entry, too.)

If you can run ompi_info and possibly even launch MPI processes locally, but fail to launch MPI processes on remote hosts, it is likely that you do not have your PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH setup properly on the remote nodes.

Specifically, the Open MPI commands usually run properly even if LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not set properly because they encode the Open MPI library location in their executables and search there by default. Hence, running ompi_info (and friends) usually works, even in some improperly setup environments.

However, Open MPI's wrapper compilers do not encode the Open MPI library locations in MPI executables by default (the wrappers only specify a bare minimum of flags necessary to create MPI executables; we consider any flags beyond this bare minimum set a local policy decision). Hence, attempting to launch MPI executables in environments where LD_LIBRARY_PATH is either not set or was set improperly may result in messages about libmpi.so not being found.

You can change Open MPI's wrapper compiler behavior to specify the run-time location of Open MPI's libraries, if you wish.

Depending on how Open MPI was configured and/or invoked, it may even be possible to run MPI applications in environments where PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not set, or is set improperly. This can be desirable for environments where multiple MPI implementations are installed, such as multiple versions of Open MPI.

In addition to what is mentioned in this FAQ entry, when you are able to run MPI jobs on a single host, but fail to run them across multiple hosts, try the following:

1. Ensure that your launcher is able to launch across multiple hosts. For example, if you are using ssh, try to ssh to each remote host and ensure that you are not prompted for a password. For example:

   1 2	shell$ ssh remotehost hostname remotehost

   If you are unable to launch across multiple hosts, check that your SSH keys are setup properly. Or, if you are running in a managed environment, such as in a Slurm, Torque, or other job launcher, check that you have reserved enough hosts, are running in an allocated job, etc.

2. Ensure that your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH are set correctly on each remote host on which you are trying to run. For example, with ssh:

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   shell$ ssh remotehost env | grep -i path PATH=...path on the remote host... LD_LIBRARY_PATH=...LD library path on the remote host...

   If your PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH are not set properly, see this FAQ entry for the correct values. Keep in mind that it is fine to have multiple Open MPI installations installed on a machine; the first Open MPI installation found by PATH and LD_LIBARY_PATH is the one that matters.

3. Run a simple, non-MPI job across multiple hosts. This verifies that the Open MPI run-time system is functioning properly across multiple hosts. For example, try running the hostname command:

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   shell$ mpirun --host remotehost hostname remotehost shell$ mpirun --host remotehost,otherhost hostname remotehost otherhost

   If you are unable to run non-MPI jobs across multiple hosts, check for common problems such as:

   1. Check your non-interactive shell setup on each remote host to ensure that it is setting up the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH properly.
   2. Check that Open MPI is finding and launching the correct version of Open MPI on the remote hosts.
   3. Ensure that you have firewalling disabled between hosts (Open MPI opens random TCP and sometimes random UDP ports between hosts in a single MPI job).
   4. Try running with the plm_base_verbose MCA parameter at level 10, which will enable extra debugging output to see how Open MPI launches on remote hosts. For example: [mpirun --mca plm_base_verbose 10 --host remotehost hostname]

4. Now run a simple MPI job across multiple hosts that does not involve MPI communications. The "hello_c" program in the examples directory in the Open MPI distribution is a good choice. This verifies that the MPI subsystem is able to initialize and terminate properly. For example:

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   shell$ mpirun --host remotehost,otherhost hello_c Hello, world, I am 0 of 1, (Open MPI v5.0.6, package: Open MPI jsquyres@builder.cisco.com Distribution, ident: 5.0.6, DATE) Hello, world, I am 1 of 1, (Open MPI v5.0.6, package: Open MPI jsquyres@builder.cisco.com Distribution, ident: 5.0.6, DATE)

   If you are unable to run simple, non-communication MPI jobs, this can indicate that your Open MPI installation is unable to initialize properly on remote hosts. Double check your non-interactive login setup on remote hosts.

5. Now run a simple MPI job across multiple hosts that does does some simple MPI communications. The "ring_c" program in the examples directory in the Open MPI distribution is a good choice. This verifies that the MPI subsystem is able to pass MPI traffic across your network. For example:

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   shell$ mpirun --host remotehost,otherhost ring_c Process 0 sending 10 to 0, tag 201 (1 processes in ring) Process 0 sent to 0 Process 0 decremented value: 9 Process 0 decremented value: 8 Process 0 decremented value: 7 Process 0 decremented value: 6 Process 0 decremented value: 5 Process 0 decremented value: 4 Process 0 decremented value: 3 Process 0 decremented value: 2 Process 0 decremented value: 1 Process 0 decremented value: 0 Process 0 exiting

   If you are unable to run simple MPI jobs across multiple hosts, this may indicate a problem with the network(s) that Open MPI is trying to use for MPI communications. Try limiting the networks that it uses, and/or exploring levels 1 through 3 MCA parameters for the communications module that you are using. For example, if you're using the TCP BTL, see the output of [ompi_info --level 3 --param btl tcp] .

The problem is usually because the Intel libraries cannot be found on the node where Open MPI is attempting to launch an MPI executable. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 1 --host node1.example.com mpi_hello
orted: error while loading shared libraries: libimf.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A daemon (pid 11893) died unexpectedly with status 127 while
attempting to launch so we are aborting.
[...more error messages...]

Open MPI first attempts to launch a "helper" daemon (orted) on node1.example.com, but it failed because one of orted's dependent libraries was not able to be found. This particular library, libimf.so, is an Intel compiler library. As such, it is likely that the user did not setup the Intel compiler library in their environment properly on this node.

Double check that you have setup the Intel compiler environment on the target node, for both interactive and non-interactive logins. It is a common error to ensure that the Intel compiler environment is setup properly for interactive logins, but not for non-interactive logins. For example:

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head_node$ cd $HOME
head_node$ mpicc mpi_hello.c -o mpi_hello
head_node$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com
 
Welcome to node2.
node2$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
node2$ exit
 
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com $HOME/mpi_hello
mpi_hello: error while loading shared libraries: libimf.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The above example shows that running a trivial C program compiled by the Intel compilers works fine on both the head node and node1 when logging in interactively, but fails when run on node1 non-interactively. Check your shell script startup files and verify that the Intel compiler environment is setup properly for non-interactive logins.

The problem is usually because the PGI libraries cannot be found on the node where Open MPI is attempting to launch an MPI executable. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 1 --host node1.example.com mpi_hello
orted: error while loading shared libraries: libpgc.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A daemon (pid 11893) died unexpectedly with status 127 while
attempting to launch so we are aborting.
[...more error messages...]

Open MPI first attempts to launch a "helper" daemon (orted) on node1.example.com, but it failed because one of orted's dependent libraries was not able to be found. This particular library, libpgc.so, is a PGI compiler library. As such, it is likely that the user did not setup the PGI compiler library in their environment properly on this node.

Double check that you have setup the PGI compiler environment on the target node, for both interactive and non-interactive logins. It is a common error to ensure that the PGI compiler environment is setup properly for interactive logins, but not for non-interactive logins. For example:

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head_node$ cd $HOME
head_node$ mpicc mpi_hello.c -o mpi_hello
head_node$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com
 
Welcome to node2.
node2$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
node2$ exit
 
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com $HOME/mpi_hello
mpi_hello: error while loading shared libraries: libpgc.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The above example shows that running a trivial C program compiled by the PGI compilers works fine on both the head node and node1 when logging in interactively, but fails when run on node1 non-interactively. Check your shell script startup files and verify that the PGI compiler environment is setup properly for non-interactive logins.

The problem is usually because the PathScale libraries cannot be found on the node where Open MPI is attempting to launch an MPI executable. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 1 --host node1.example.com mpi_hello
orted: error while loading shared libraries: libmv.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
A daemon (pid 11893) died unexpectedly with status 127 while
attempting to launch so we are aborting.
[...more error messages...]

Open MPI first attempts to launch a "helper" daemon (orted) on node1.example.com, but it failed because one of orted's dependent libraries was not able to be found. This particular library, libmv.so, is a PathScale compiler library. As such, it is likely that the user did not setup the PathScale compiler library in their environment properly on this node.

Double check that you have setup the PathScale compiler environment on the target node, for both interactive and non-interactive logins. It is a common error to ensure that the PathScale compiler environment is setup properly for interactive logins, but not for non-interactive logins. For example:

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head_node$ cd $HOME
head_node$ mpicc mpi_hello.c -o mpi_hello
head_node$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com
 
Welcome to node2.
node2$ ./mpi_hello
Hello world, I am 0 of 1.
node2$ exit
 
head_node$ ssh node2.example.com $HOME/mpi_hello
mpi_hello: error while loading shared libraries: libmv.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The above example shows that running a trivial C program compiled by the PathScale compilers works fine on both the head node and node1 when logging in interactively, but fails when run on node1 non-interactively. Check your shell script startup files and verify that the PathScale compiler environment is setup properly for non-interactive logins.

Yes.

Indeed, Open MPI's mpirun and mpiexec are actually synonyms for our underlying launcher named orterun (i.e., the Open Run-Time Environment layer in Open MPI, or ORTE). So you can use mpirun and mpiexec to launch any application. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 2 --host a,b uptime

This will launch a copy of the Unix command uptime on the hosts a and b.

Other questions in the FAQ section deal with the specifics of the mpirun command line interface; suffice it to say that it works equally well for MPI and non-MPI applications.

Yes, but it will depend on your local setup and may require additional setup.

In short: you will need to have X forwarding enabled from the remote processes to the display where you want output to appear. In a secure environment, you can simply allow all X requests to be shown on the target display and set the DISPLAY environment variable in all MPI processes' environments to the target display, perhaps something like this:

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shell$ hostname
my_desktop.secure-cluster.example.com
shell$ xhost +
shell$ mpirun -np 4 -x DISPLAY=my_desktop.secure-cluster.example.com a.out

However, this technique is not generally suitable for unsecure environments (because it allows anyone to read and write to your display). A slightly more secure way is to only allow X connections from the nodes where your application will be running:

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shell$ hostname
my_desktop.secure-cluster.example.com
shell$ xhost +compute1 +compute2 +compute3 +compute4
compute1 being added to access control list
compute2 being added to access control list
compute3 being added to access control list
compute4 being added to access control list
shell$ mpirun -np 4 -x DISPLAY=my_desktop.secure-cluster.example.com a.out

(assuming that the four nodes you are running on are compute1 through compute4).

Other methods are available, but they involve sophisticated X forwarding through mpirun and are generally more complicated than desirable.

Maybe. But probably not.

Open MPI provides fairly sophisticated stdin / stdout / stderr forwarding. However, it does not work well with curses, ncurses, readline, or other sophisticated I/O packages that generally require direct control of the terminal.

Every application and I/O library is different — you should try to see if yours is supported. But chances are that it won't work.

Sorry. :-(

mpirun supports the "--help" option which provides a usage message and a summary of the options that it supports. It should be considered the definitive list of what options are provided.

Several notable options are:

• --hostfile: Specify a hostfile for launchers (such as the rsh launcher) that need to be told on which hosts to start parallel applications. Note that for compatibility with other MPI implementations, --machinefile is a synonym for --hostfile.
• --host: Specify a host or list of hosts to run on (see this FAQ entry for more details)
• --np (or -np): Indicate the number of processes to start.
• --mca (or -mca): Set MCA parameters (see the Run-Time Tuning FAQ)
• --wdir <directory>: Set the working directory of the started applications. If not supplied, the current working directory is assumed (or $HOME, if the current working directory does not exist on all nodes).
• -x <env-variable-name>: The name of an environment variable to export to the parallel application. The -x option can be specified multiple times to export multiple environment variables to the parallel application.

The --hostfile option to mpirun takes a filename that lists hosts on which to launch MPI processes.

NOTE: The hosts listed in a hostfile have nothing to do with which network interfaces are used for MPI communication. They are only used to specify on which hosts to launch MPI processes.

Hostfiles my_hostfile are simple text files with hosts specified, one per line. Each host can also specify a default and maximum number of slots to be used on that host (i.e., the number of available processors on that host). Comments are also supported, and blank lines are ignored. For example:

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# This is an example hostfile.  Comments begin with #
#
# The following node is a single processor machine:
foo.example.com
 
# The following node is a dual-processor machine:
bar.example.com slots=2
 
# The following node is a quad-processor machine, and we absolutely
# want to disallow over-subscribing it:
yow.example.com slots=4 max-slots=4

slots and max-slots are discussed more in this FAQ entry

Hostfiles works in two different ways:

• Exclusionary: If a list of hosts to run on has been provided by another source (e.g., by a hostfile or a batch scheduler such as Slurm, PBS/Torque, SGE, etc.), the hosts provided by the hostfile must be in the already-provided host list. If the hostfile-specified nodes are not in the already-provided host list, mpirun will abort without launching anything.

  In this case, hostfiles act like an exclusionary filter — they limit the scope of where processes will be scheduled from the original list of hosts to produce a final list of hosts.

  For example, say that a scheduler job contains hosts node01 through node04. If you run:

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  shell$ cat my_hosts node03 shell$ mpirun -np 1 --hostfile my_hosts hostname

  This will run a single copy of hostname on the host node03. However, if you run:

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  shell$ cat my_hosts node17 shell$ mpirun -np 1 --hostfile my_hosts hostname

  This is an error (because node17 is not listed in my_hosts); mpirun will abort.

  Finally, note that in exclusionary mode, processes will only be executed on the hostfile-specified hosts, even if it causes oversubscription. For example:

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  shell$ cat my_hosts node03 shell$ mpirun -np 4 --hostfile my_hosts hostname

  This will launch 4 copies of hostname on host node03.

• Inclusionary: If a list of hosts has not been provided by another source, then the hosts provided by the --hostfile option will be used as the original and final host list.

  In this case, --hostfile acts as an inclusionary agent; all --hostfile-supplied hosts become available for scheduling processes. For example (assume that you are not in a scheduling environment where a list of nodes is being transparently supplied):

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  shell$ cat my_hosts node01.example.com node02.example.com node03.example.com shell$ mpirun -np 3 --hostfile my_hosts hostname

  This will launch a single copy of hostname on the hosts node01.example.com, node02.example.com, and node03.example.com.

Note, too, that --hostfile is essentially a per-application switch. Hence, if you specify multiple applications (as in an MPMD job), --hostfile can be specified multiple times:

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shell$ cat hostfile_1
node01.example.com
shell$ cat hostfile_2
node02.example.com
shell$ mpirun -np 1 --hostfile hostfile_1 hostname : -np 1 --hostfile hostfile_2 uptime
node01.example.com
 06:11:45 up 1 day,  2:32,  0 users,  load average: 21.65, 20.85, 19.84

Notice that hostname was launched on node01.example.com and uptime was launched on host02.example.com.

The --host option to mpirun takes a comma-delimited list of hosts on which to run. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 3 --host a,b,c hostname

Will launch one copy of hostname on hosts a, b, and c.

NOTE: The hosts specified by the --host option have nothing to do with which network interfaces are used for MPI communication. They are only used to specify on which hosts to launch MPI processes.

--host works in two different ways:

• Exclusionary: If a list of hosts to run on has been provided by another source (e.g., by a hostfile or a batch scheduler such as Slurm, PBS/Torque, SGE, etc.), the hosts provided by the --host option must be in the already-provided host list. If the --host-specified nodes are not in the already-provided host list, mpirun will abort without launching anything.

  In this case, the --host option acts like an exclusionary filter — it limits the scope of where processes will be scheduled from the original list of hosts to produce a final list of hosts.

  For example, say that the hostfile my_hosts contains the hosts node1 through node4. If you run:

  1	shell$ mpirun -np 1 --hostfile my_hosts --host node3 hostname

  This will run a single copy of hostname on the host node3. However, if you run:

  1	shell$ mpirun -np 1 --hostfile my_hosts --host node17 hostname

  This is an error (because node17 is not listed in my_hosts); mpirun will abort.

  Finally, note that in exclusionary mode, processes will only be executed on the --host-specified hosts, even if it causes oversubscription. For example:

  1	shell$ mpirun -np 4 --host a uptime

  This will launch 4 copies of uptime on host a.

• Inclusionary: If a list of hosts has not been provided by another source, then the hosts provided by the --host option will be used as the original and final host list.

  In this case, --host acts as an inclusionary agent; all --host-supplied hosts become available for scheduling processes. For example (assume that you are not in a scheduling environment where a list of nodes is being transparently supplied):

  1	shell$ mpirun -np 3 --host a,b,c hostname

  This will launch a single copy of hostname on the hosts a, b, and c.

Note, too, that --host is essentially a per-application switch. Hence, if you specify multiple applications (as in an MPMD job), --host can be specified multiple times:

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shell$ mpirun -np 1 --host a hostname : -np 1 --host b uptime

This will launch hostname on host a and uptime on host b.

The short version is that if you are not oversubscribing your nodes (i.e., trying to run more processes than you have told Open MPI are available on that node), scheduling is pretty simple and occurs either on a by-slot or by-node round robin schedule. If you're oversubscribing, the issue gets much more complicated — keep reading.

The more complete answer is: Open MPI schedules processes to nodes by asking two questions from each application on the mpirun command line:

• How many processes should be launched?
• Where should those processes be launched?

The "how many" question is directly answered with the -np switch to mpirun. The "where" question is a little more complicated, and depends on three factors:

• The final node list (e.g., after --host exclusionary or inclusionary processing)
• The scheduling policy (which applies to all applications in a single job)
• The default and maximum number of slots on each host

As briefly mentioned in this FAQ entry, slots are Open MPI's representation of how many processors are available on a given host.

The default number of slots on any machine, if not explicitly specified, is 1 (e.g., if a host is listed in a hostfile by has no corresponding "slots" keyword). Schedulers (such as Slurm, PBS/Torque, SGE, etc.) automatically provide an accurate default slot count.

Max slot counts, however, are rarely specified by schedulers. The max slot count for each node will default to "infinite" if it is not provided (meaning that Open MPI will oversubscribe the node if you ask it to — see more on oversubscribing in this FAQ entry).

Open MPI currently supports two scheduling policies: by slot and by node:

• By slot: This is the default scheduling policy, but can also be explicitly requested by using either the --byslot option to mpirun or by setting the MCA parameter rmaps_base_schedule_policy to the string "slot".

  In this mode, Open MPI will schedule processes on a node until all of its default slots are exhausted before proceeding to the next node. In MPI terms, this means that Open MPI tries to maximize the number of adjacent ranks in MPI_COMM_WORLD on the same host without oversubscribing that host.

  For example:

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  shell$ cat my-hosts node0 slots=2 max_slots=20 node1 slots=2 max_slots=20 shell$ mpirun --hostfile my-hosts -np 8 --byslot | sort Hello World I am rank 0 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 1 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 2 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 3 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 4 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 5 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 6 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 7 of 8 running on node1

• By node: This policy can be requested either by using the --bynode option to mpirun or by setting the MCA parameter rmaps_base_schedule_policy to the string "node".

  In this mode, Open MPI will schedule a single process on each node in a round-robin fashion (looping back to the beginning of the node list as necessary) until all processes have been scheduled. Nodes are skipped once their default slot counts are exhausted.

  For example:

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  shell$ cat my-hosts node0 slots=2 max_slots=20 node1 slots=2 max_slots=20 shell$ mpirun --hostname my-hosts -np 8 --bynode hello | sort Hello World I am rank 0 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 1 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 2 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 3 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 4 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 5 of 8 running on node1 Hello World I am rank 6 of 8 running on node0 Hello World I am rank 7 of 8 running on node1

In both policies, if the default slot count is exhausted on all nodes while there are still processes to be scheduled, Open MPI will loop through the list of nodes again and try to schedule one more process to each node until all processes are scheduled. Nodes are skipped in this process if their maximum slot count is exhausted. If the maximum slot count is exhausted on all nodes while there are still processes to be scheduled, Open MPI will abort without launching any processes.

NOTE: This is the scheduling policy in Open MPI because of a long historical precedent in LAM/MPI. However, the scheduling of processes to processors is a component in the RMAPS framework in Open MPI; it can be changed. If you don't like how this scheduling occurs, please let us know.

If you are using a supported resource manager, Open MPI will get the slot information directly from that entity. If you are using the --host parameter to mpirun, be aware that each instance of a hostname bumps up the internal slot count by one. For example:

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shell$ mpirun --host node0,node0,node0,node0 ....

This tells Open MPI that host "node0" has a slot count of 4. This is very different than, for example:

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shell$ mpirun -np 4 --host node0 a.out

This tells Open MPI that host "node0" has a slot count of 1 but you are running 4 processes on it. Specifically, Open MPI assumes that you are oversubscribing the node.

Yes.

But be very careful to ensure that Open MPI knows that you are oversubscibing your node! If Open MPI is unaware that you are oversubscribing a node, severe performance degradation can result.

See this FAQ entry for more details on oversubscription.

Yes.

However, it is critical that Open MPI knows that you are oversubscribing the node, or severe performance degradation can result.

The short explanation is as follows: never specify a number of slots that is more than the available number of processors. For example, if you want to run 4 processes on a uniprocessor, then indicate that you only have 1 slot but want to run 4 processes. For example:

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shell$ cat my-hostfile
localhost
shell$ mpirun -np 4 --hostfile my-hostfile a.out

Specifically: do NOT have a hostfile that contains "slots = 4" (because there is only one available processor).

Here's the full explanation:

Open MPI basically runs its message passing progression engine in two modes: aggressive and degraded.

• Degraded: When Open MPI thinks that it is in an oversubscribed mode (i.e., more processes are running than there are processors available), MPI processes will automatically run in degraded mode and frequently yield the processor to its peers, thereby allowing all processes to make progress (be sure to see this FAQ entry that describes how degraded mode affects processor and memory affinity).
• Aggressive: When Open MPI thinks that it is in an exactly- or under-subscribed mode (i.e., the number of running processes is equal to or less than the number of available processors), MPI processes will automatically run in aggressive mode, meaning that they will never voluntarily give up the processor to other processes. With some network transports, this means that Open MPI will spin in tight loops attempting to make message passing progress, effectively causing other processes to not get any CPU cycles (and therefore never make any progress).

For example, on a uniprocessor node:

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shell$ cat my-hostfile
localhost slots=4
shell$ mpirun -np 4 --hostfile my-hostfile a.out

This would cause all 4 MPI processes to run in aggressive mode because Open MPI thinks that there are 4 available processors to use. This is actually a lie (there is only 1 processor — not 4), and can cause extremely bad performance.

Yes.

The MCA parameter mpi_yield_when_idle controls whether an MPI process runs in Aggressive or Degraded performance mode. Setting it to zero forces Aggressive mode; any other value forces Degraded mode (see this FAQ entry to see how to set MCA parameters).

Note that this value only affects the behavior of MPI processes when they are blocking in MPI library calls. It does not affect behavior of non-MPI processes, nor does it affect the behavior of a process that is not inside an MPI library call.

Open MPI normally sets this parameter automatically (see this FAQ entry for details). Users are cautioned against setting this parameter unless you are really, absolutely, positively sure of what you are doing.

Generally, you can run Open MPI processes with TotalView as follows:

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shell$ mpirun --debug ...mpirun arguments...

Assuming that TotalView is the first supported parallel debugger in your path, Open MPI will autmoatically invoke the correct underlying command to run your MPI process in the TotalView debugger. Be sure to see this FAQ entry for details about what versions of Open MPI and TotalView are compatible.

For reference, this underlying command form is the following:

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shell$ totalview mpirun -a ...mpirun arguments...

So if you wanted to run a 4-process MPI job of your a.out executable, it would look like this:

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shell$ totalview mpirun -a -np 4 a.out

Alternatively, Open MPI's mpirun offers the "-tv" convenience option which does the same thing as TotalView's "-a" syntax. For example:

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shell$ mpirun -tv -np 4 a.out

Note that by default, TotalView will stop deep in the machine code of mpirun itself, which is not what most users want. It is possible to get TotalView to recognize that mpirun is simply a "starter" program and should be (effectively) ignored. Specifically, TotalView can be configured to skip mpirun (and mpiexec and orterun) and jump right into your MPI application. This can be accomplished by placing some startup instructions in a TotalView-specific file named $HOME/.tvdrc.

Open MPI includes a sample TotalView startup file that performs this function (see etc/openmpi-totalview.tcl in Open MPI distribution tarballs; it is also installed, by default, to $prefix/etc/openmpi-totalview.tcl in the Open MPI installation). This file can be either copied to $HOME/.tvdrc or sourced from the $HOME/.tvdrc file. For example, placing the following line in your $HOME/.tvdrc (replacing /path/to/openmpi/installation with the proper directory name, of course) will use the Open MPI-provided startup file:

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source /path/to/openmpi/installation/etc/openmpi-totalview.tcl

As of August 2015, DDT has built-in startup for MPI applications within its Alinea Forge GUI product. You can simply use the built-in support to launch, monitor, and kill MPI jobs.

If you are using an older version of DDT that does not have this built-in support, keep reading.

If you've used DDT at least once before (to use the configuration wizard to setup support for Open MPI), you can start it on the command line with:

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shell$ mpirun --debug ...mpirun arguments...

Assuming that you are using Open MPI v1.2.4 or later, and assuming that DDT is the first supported parallel debugger in your path, Open MPI will automatically invoke the correct underlying command to run your MPI process in the DDT debugger. For reference (or if you are using an earlier version of Open MPI), this underlying command form is the following:

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shell$ ddt -n {nprocs} -start {exe-name}

Note that passing arbitrary arguments to Open MPI's mpirun is not supported with the DDT debugger.

You can also attach to already-running processes with either of the following two syntaxes:

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shell$ ddt -attach {hostname1:pid} [{hostname2:pid} ...] {exec-name}
# Or
shell$ ddt -attach-file {filename of newline separated hostname:pid pairs} {exec-name}

DDT can even be configured to operate with cluster/resource schedulers such that it can run on a local workstation, submit your MPI job via the scheduler, and then attach to the MPI job when it starts.

See the official DDT documentation for more details.

The documentation contained in the Open MPI tarball will have the most up-to-date information, but as of v1.0, Open MPI supports:

• BProc versions 3 and 4 (discontinued starting with OMPI v1.3)
• Sun Grid Engine (SGE), and the open source Grid Engine (support first introduced in Open MPI v1.2)
• PBS Pro, Torque, and Open PBS
• LoadLeveler scheduler (full support since 1.1.1)
• rsh / ssh
• Slurm
• LSF
• XGrid (discontinued starting with OMPI 1.4)
• Yod (Cray XT-3 and XT-4)

See this FAQ entry.

If support for these systems is included in your Open MPI installation (which you can check with the ompi_info command — look for components named "slurm" and/or "tm"), Open MPI will automatically detect when it is running inside such jobs and will just "do the Right Thing."

See this FAQ entry for a description of how to run jobs in Slurm; see this FAQ entry for a description of how to run jobs in PBS/Torque.

See this FAQ entry.

If support for LoadLeveler is included in your Open MPI installation (which you can check with the ompi_info command — look for components named "loadleveler"), Open MPI will automatically detect when it is running inside such jobs and will just "do the Right Thing."

Specifically, if you execute an mpirun command in a LoadLeveler job, it will automatically determine what nodes and how many slots on each node have been allocated to the current job. There is no need to specify what nodes to run on. Open MPI will then attempt to launch the job using whatever resource is available (on Linux rsh/ssh is used).

For example:

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shell$ cat job
#@ output  = job.out
#@ error   = job.err
#@ job_type = parallel
#@ node = 3
#@ tasks_per_node = 4
mpirun a.out
shell$ llsubmit job

This will run 4 MPI process per node on the 3 nodes which were allocated by LoadLeveler for this job.

For users of Open MPI 1.1 series: In version 1.1.0 there exists a problem which will make it so that Open MPI will not be able to determine what nodes are available to it if the job has more than 128 tasks. In the 1.1.x series starting with version 1.1.1., this can be worked around by passing "-mca ras_loadleveler_priority 110" to mpirun. Version 1.2 and above work without any additional flags.

If you want to load a the shared library libmpi explicitly at runtime either by using dlopen() from C/C ++ or something like the ctypes package from Python, some extra care is required. The default configuration of Open MPI uses dlopen() internally to load its support components. These components rely on symbols available in libmpi. In order to make the symbols in libmpi available to the components loaded by Open MPI at runtime, libmpi must be loaded with the RTLD_GLOBAL option.

In C/C++, this option is specified as the second parameter to the POSIX dlopen(3) function.

When using ctypes with Python, this can be done with the second (optional) parameter to CDLL(). For example (shown below in Mac OS X, where Open MPI's shared library name ends in ".dylib"; other operating systems use other suffixes, such as ".so"):

from ctypes import *
 
mpi = CDLL('libmpi.0.dylib', RTLD_GLOBAL)
 
f = pythonapi.Py_GetArgcArgv
argc = c_int()
argv = POINTER(c_char_p)()
f(byref(argc), byref(argv))
mpi.MPI_Init(byref(argc), byref(argv))
 
# Your MPI program here
 
mpi.MPI_Finalize()

Other scripting languages should have similar options when dynamically loading shared libraries.

Beginning with the v1.3 release, Open MPI provides the following environmental variables that will be defined on every MPI process:

• OMPI_COMM_WORLD_SIZE - the number of processes in this process's MPI_COMM_WORLD
• OMPI_COMM_WORLD_RANK - the MPI rank of this process in MPI_COMM_WORLD
• OMPI_COMM_WORLD_LOCAL_RANK - the relative rank of this process on this node within its job. For example, if four processes in a job share a node, they will each be given a local rank ranging from 0 to 3.
• OMPI_UNIVERSE_SIZE - the number of process slots allocated to this job. Note that this may be different than the number of processes in the job.
• OMPI_COMM_WORLD_LOCAL_SIZE - the number of ranks from this job that are running on this node.
• OMPI_COMM_WORLD_NODE_RANK - the relative rank of this process on this node looking across ALL jobs.

Open MPI guarantees that these variables will remain stable throughout future releases

By default, Open MPI opens MPI connections between processes in a "lazy" fashion - i.e., the connections are only opened when the MPI process actually attempts to send a message to another process for the first time. This is done since (a) Open MPI has no idea what connections an application process will really use, and (b) creating the connections takes time. Once the connection is established, it remains "connected" until one of the two connected processes terminates, so the creation time cost is paid only once.

Applications that require a fully connected topology, however, can see improved startup time if they automatically "pre-connect" all their processes during MPI_Init. Accordingly, Open MPI provides the MCA parameter "mpi_preconnect_mpi" which directs Open MPI to establish a "mostly" connected topology during MPI_Init (note that this MCA parameter used to be named "mpi_preconnect_all" prior to Open MPI v1.5; in v1.5, it was deprecated and replaced with "mpi_preconnect_mpi"). This is accomplished in a somewhat scalable fashion to help minimize startup time.

Users can set this parameter in two ways:

• in the environment as OMPI_MCA_mpi_preconnect_mpi=1
• on the command line as mpirun -mca mpi_preconnect_mpi 1

See this FAQ entry for more details on how to set MCA parameters.

See these two FAQ categories:

• Building CUDA-aware support in Open MPI
• Running with CUDA-aware support in Open MPI

Open MPI has two main components for Libfabric (a.k.a., OFI) communications:

1. ofi MTL: Available since Open MPI v1.10, this component is used with the cm PML and is used for two-sided MPI communication (e.g., MPI_SEND and MPI_RECV). The ofi MTL requires that the Libfabric provider support reliable datagrams with ordered tagged messaging (specifically: FI_EP_RDM endpoints, FI_TAGGED capabilities, and FI_ORDER_SAS ordering).
2. ofi BTL: Available since Open MPI v4.0.0, this component is used for one-sided MPI communications (e.g., MPI_PUT). The ofi BTL requires that the Libfabric provider support reliable datagrams, RMA and atomic operations, and remote atomic completion notifications (specifically: FI_EP_RDM endpoints, FI_RMA and FI_ATOMIC capabilities, and FI_DELIVERY_COMPLETE op flags).

See each Lifabric provider man page (e.g., fi_sockets(7)) to understand which provider will work for each of the above-listed Open MPI components. Some providers may require to be used with one of the Libfabric utility providers; for example, the verbs provider needs to be paired with utility provider ofi_rxm to provide reliable datagram endpoint support (verbs;ofi_rxm).

Both components have MCA parameters to specify the Libfabric provider(s) that will be included/excluded in the selection process. For example:

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shell$ mpirun --mca pml cm --mca mtl ofi --mca mtl_ofi_provider_include psm2 mpi_hello

In addition, each component has specific parameters for each one; see ompi_info --param -level 9 for a full list. For example:

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shell$ ompi_info --param mtl ofi --level 9

For more information refer to libfabric.org web site.

Currently, Open MPI supports PSM2 MTL and OFI MTL (using PSM2 OFI provider) components which can be used to communicate with Intel Omni-Path (OPA) software stack

For guidlines on tuning run-time characteristics when using OPA devices, please refer to this FAQ entry.