Advanced installation method

Passwordless login via ssh

All hosts (local as well as remote) are accessed via the secure shell (ssh). The user must establish passwordless login using the private/public-key mechanism? (HLRNIII users please see hints). To ensure proper function of mrun, passwordless login must be established in both directions, from the local to the remote host as well as from the remote to the local host! Test this by carrying out e.g. on the local host:

  ssh  <username on remote host>@<remote IP-address>

and on the remote host:

  ssh  <username on local host>@<local IP-address>

In both cases you should not be prompted for a password. Before continuing the further installation process, this must be absolutely guaranteed! It must also be guaranteed for all other remote hosts, on which PALM shall run.

Please note that on many remote hosts, passwordless login must also work within the remote host, i.e. for ssh connections from the remote host to itself. Test this by executing on the remote host:

  ssh <username on remote host>@<remote IP-address>

You should not be prompted for a password.

Package installation

The first installation step requires creating a set of directories on the local and, for the advanced method, on the remote host. These are:

  ~/job_queue
  ~/palm
  ~/palm/current_version
  ~/palm/current_version/JOBS

The names of these directories can be freely selected (except ~/job_queue), however new users should choose them as suggested, since many examples in this documentation as well as all example files are based on these settings. The directory ~/palm/current_version on the local host will be called the working directory from now on.

In the second step a working copy of the recent PALM version, including the source code, scripts, documentation, etc. must be copied to the working directory (local host!) by executing the following commands. Replace <your username> by the name that you have chosen to access the repository, and <#> by any of the available PALM releases, e.g. "3.7a" (new releases will be announced to members of the PALM mailing list).

  cd ~/palm/current_version
  svn checkout --username <your username> https://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de/svn/palm/tags/release-<#> trunk

You will then be prompted for your password. After completion, there should be a subdirectory trunk in your working directory. It contains a number of further subdirectories, which contain e.g. the PALM source code (SOURCE) and the scripts for running PALM (SCRIPTS).

Alternatively, executing

  svn checkout --username <your username> https://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de/svn/palm/tags/release-<#> abcde

will place your working copy in a directory named abcde (instead of a directory named trunk). But keep in mind that you will have to adjust several paths given below, if you do not use the default directory trunk.

Please never touch any file in your working copy of PALM, unless you know what you are doing.

You can also get a copy of the most recent developer code by executing

  svn checkout --username <your username> https://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de/svn/palm/trunk trunk

This version may contain new features (they might not be documented well), but it may also contain bugs.

Package configuration

To use the PALM scripts, the PATH-variable has to be extended and the environment variable PALM_BIN has to be set (on local and remote host) in the respective profile of the users default shell (e.g. in .profile, if ksh is used):

  export PATH=$HOME/palm/current_version/trunk/SCRIPTS:$PATH
  export PALM_BIN=$HOME/palm/current_version/trunk/SCRIPTS

You may have to login again in order to activate these settings.

On the local and on the remote host, some small helper/utility programs have to be installed, which are later used by mrun e.g. for PALM data postprocessing. The installation is done by mbuild. This script requires a configuration file .mrun.config, which will be also used by mrun in the following. A copy has to be put into the working directory under the name .mrun.config by

  cp trunk/SCRIPTS/.mrun.config.<compiler> .mrun.config

Please replace <compiler> with either gfortran or ifort in order to get the default configuration file for the respective compiler. Beside many other things, this file contains typical installation parameters like compiler name, compiler options, etc. for a set of different (remote) hosts. Please edit this file, uncomment lines like

  #%remote_username  <replace by your ... username>   <host identifier>

by removing the first hash (#) character and replace the string "<replace by ...>" by your username on the respective host given in the <host identifier>. You only have to uncomment lines for those hosts on which you intend to use PALM.

Warning: When editing the configuration file, please NEVER use the TAB key. Otherwise, very confusing errors may occur when mrun is executing.

Beside the default configuration files .mrun.config.<compiler>, the directory trunk/SCRIPTS contains additional configuration files which are already adjusted for special hosts, e.g. .mrun.config.imuk can be used at Hannover University, etc.. These files have to be edited in the same way as described above.

After modifying the configuration file, the respective executables are generated by executing

  mbuild -u -h lcmuk
  mbuild -u -h lccrayh

The second call also copies the PALM scripts (like mrun and mbuild) to the remote host.

Pre-compilation of PALM code

To avoid the re-compilation of the complete source code for each model run, PALM willl be pre-compiled once on the remote host by again using the script mbuild. Due to the use of FORTRAN modules in the source code, the subroutines must be compiled in a certain order. Therefore the so-called make mechanism is used (see the respective man-page of the Unix operating system), requiring a Makefile, in which the dependencies are described. This file is found in subdirectory trunk/SOURCE, where also the PALM code is stored. The compiled sources (object files) are stored on the remote computer in the default directory ~/palm/current_version/MAKE_DEPOSITORY_<block_descriptor>, where <block_descriptor> is composed of the third (and fourth, if existing) column of the respective block in the configuration file (e.g. lccrayh_parallel for HLRN).

The pre-compilation for the remote host (here the SGI-ICE system of HLRN) is done by

  mbuild -h lccrayh  

'mbuild' will prompt some queries, which must all be answered "y" by the user. The compiling process will take some time. mbuild transfers the respective compiler calls to the remote host where they are carried out interactively. You can follow the progress at the terminal window, where also error messages are displayed (hopefully not for this standard installation). By just entering

  mbuild

PALM will be (consecutively) pre-compiled for all remote hosts listed in the configuration file. If you want to compile for the local host only, please enter

  mbuild -h lcmuk 

Installation verification

As a last step, after the compilation has been finished, the PALM installation has to be verified. For this purpose a simple test run is carried out. This once again requires the mrun configuration file?, as well as the parameter file. The parameter file must be copied from the PALM working copy by

  mkdir -p JOBS/example_cbl/INPUT
  cp trunk/INSTALL/example_cbl_p3d JOBS/example_cbl/INPUT/example_cbl_p3d

The test run can now be started by executing the command

  mrun -d example_cbl -h lccrayh -K parallel -X 8 -T 8 -t 500 -q mpp1testq -r "d3# pr#"

This specific run will be carried out on 8 PEs and is allowed to use up to 500 seconds CPU time. After pressing <return>, the most important settings of the job are displayed at the terminal window and the user is prompted for o.k. ("y"). Next, a message of the queuing system like "Request … Submitted to queue… by…" should be displayed. Now the job is queued and either started immediately or at a later time, depending on the current workload of the remote host. Provided that it is executed immediately and that all things work as designed, the job protocol of this run will appear under the file name ~/job_queue/lccrayh_example no more than a few minutes later. The content of this file should be carefully examined for any error messages.

Beside the job protocol and according to the configuration file and arguments given for 'mrun' options -d and -r, further files should be found in the directories

  ~/palm/current_version/JOBS/example_cbl/MONITORING

and

  ~/palm/current_version/JOBS/example_cbl/OUTPUT

Please compare the contents of file

  ~/palm/current_version/JOBS/example_cbl/MONITORING/lccrayh_example_rc

with those of the example result file which can be found under trunk/INSTALL/example_cbl_rc, e.g. by using the standard diff command

diff  JOBS/example_cbl/MONITORING/lccrayh_example_cbl_rc trunk/INSTALL/example_cbl_rc

where it is assumed that your working directory is ~/palm/current_version.

You should not find any difference between these two files, except for the run date and time displayed at the top of the file header. If the file contents are identical, the installation is successfully completed.

Configuration for other machines

Starting from version 3.2a, beside the default hosts (HLRN, etc.), PALM can also be installed and run on other Linux-Cluster-, IBM-AIX, or NEC-SX-systems. To configure PALM for a non-default host only requires to add some lines to the configuration file .mrun.config.

First, you have to define the host identifier (a string of arbitrary length) under which your local host shall be identified by adding a line

  %host_identifier  <hostname>  <host identifier>

to the configuration file (best to do this in the section where the other default host identifiers are defined). Here <hostname> must be the name of your local host as provided by the unix-command "hostname". The first characters of <host identifier> have to be "lc", if your system is (part of) a linux-cluster, "ibm", or "nec" in case of an IBM-AIX- or NEC-SX-system, respectively. For example, if you want to install on a linux-cluster, the line may read as

  %host_identifier  foo  lc_bar

In the second step, you have to give all informations neccessary to compile and run PALM on your local host by adding an additional section to the configuration file:

  %remote_username   <1>      <host identifier> parallel
  %tmp_user_catalog  <2>      <host identifier> parallel
  %compiler_name     <3>      <host identifier> parallel
  %compiler_name_ser <4>      <host identifier> parallel
  %cpp_options       <5>      <host identifier> parallel
  %netcdf_inc        <6>      <host identifier> parallel
  %netcdf_lib        <7>      <host identifier> parallel
  %fopts             <8>      <host identifier> parallel
  %lopts             <9>      <host identifier> parallel

The section consists of four columns each separated by one or more blanks. The first column gives the name of the respective environment variable used by mrun and mbuild, while the second column defines its value. The third column has to be the host identifier as defined above, and the last column in each line must contain the string "parallel". Otherwise, the respective line(s) will be interpreted as belonging to the setup for compiling and running a serial (non-parallel) version of PALM.

All brackets have to be replaced by the appropriate settings for your local host:

• <1> is the username on your LOCAL host
• <2> is the temporary directory in which PALM runs will be carried out
• <3> is the compiler name which generates parallel code
• <4> is the compiler name for generating serial code
• <5> are the preprocessor options to be invoked. In most of the cases, it will be neccessary to adjust the MPI data types to double precision by giving -DMPI_REAL=MPI_DOUBLE_PRECISION -DMPI_2REAL=MPI_2DOUBLE_PRECISION. To switch on the netCDF support, you also have to give -D__netcdf and -D__netcdf4 (if you like to have netCDF4/HDF5 data format; this requires a netCDF4 library!).
• <6> is the compiler option for specifying the include path to search for the netCDF module/include files
• <7> are the linker options to search for the netCDF library
• <8> are the general compiler options to be used. You should allways switch on double precision (e.g. -r8) and code optimization (e.g. -O2).
• <9> are the linker options
• <host identifier> is the host identifier as defined before

A typical example may be:

  %remote_username   raasch                                  lc_bar parallel
  %tmp_user_catalog  /tmp                                    lc_bar parallel
  %compiler_name     mpif90                                  lc_bar parallel
  %compiler_name_ser ifort                                   lc_bar parallel
  %cpp_options       -DMPI_REAL=MPI_DOUBLE_PRECISION:-DMPI_2REAL=MPI_2DOUBLE_PRECISION:-D__netcdf  lc_bar parallel
  %netcdf_inc        -I:/usr/local/netcdf/include            lc_bar parallel
  %netcdf_lib        -L/usr/local/netcdf/lib:-lnetcdf        lc_bar parallel
  %fopts             -axW:-cpp:-openmp:-r8:-nbs              lc_bar parallel
  %lopts             -axW:-cpp:-openmp:-r8:-nbs:-Vaxlib      lc_bar parallel

Currently (version 3.7a), depending on the MPI version which is running on your local host, the options for the execution command (which may be mpirun or mpiexec) may have to be adjusted manually in the mrun-script. A future version will allow to give the respective settings in the configuration file.

If you have any problems with the PALM installation, the members of the PALM working group are pleased to help you.

Installation of new / other versions, version update

The PALM group announces code revisions by emails send to the PALM mailing list. If you like to be put on this list, just send an email to ​raasch@muk.uni-hannover.de. Details about new releases can be found in the PALM change log?.

Generally, there are two ways of installing new / other versions. You can install a version from the list of available PALM releases or you can update your current installation with the newest developer version of PALM.

If you have previously checked out the most recent (at that time) PALM developer version by using

  svn checkout ...../palm/trunk trunk

you can easily make an update to the newest version by changing into the working directory ~/palm/current_version and executing

  svn update trunk

This updates all files in the PALM working copy in subdirectory trunk. The update may fail due the subversion rules, if you have modified the contents of trunk. In case of any conflicts with the repository, please refer to the subversion documentation on how to remove them. In order to avoid such conflicts, modifications of the default PALM code should be omitted and be restricted to the user-interface only (see here?).

Alternatively, you can install new or other releases in a different directory, eg.

  mkdir ~/palm/release-3.1c
  cd ~/palm/release-3.1c
  svn checkout --username <your username> https://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de/svn/palm/tags/release-3.1c trunk

However, this would require to carry out again the complete installation process described above. So far, different versions of PALM cannot be used at the same time. The PALM releases from palm/tags never have to be updated with "svn update", since these releases are frozen!

After updating the working copy, please check for any differences between your current configuration file (.mrun.config) and the default configuration files under trunk/SCRIPTS/.mrun.config.<compiler> and adjust your current file, if neccessary.

The scripts and the pre-compiled code must then be updated via

  mbuild -u -h lcmuk
  mbuild -u -h ibmh
  mbuild -h ibmh

or via

  mbuild -u
  mbuild  

on all remote hosts listed in the configuration file .mrun.config.

You can use subversion for code comparison between the different versions. Also, modified code can be committed to the repository, but this is restricted to PALM developers.

If you want to recompile PALM via mbuild after you have modified the configuration file .mrun.config (e.g. if you switch to a newer compiler or NetCDF version), you will have to perform the touch command on all source files:

touch trunk/SOURCE/* .

because otherwise the make mechanism will not be able to recompile the code.

As a last step, a suitable test run should be carried out. It should be carefully examined whether and how the results created by the new version differ from those of the old version. Possible discrepancies which go beyond the ones announced in the PALM change log? should be communicated as soon as possible to the PALM group.