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PTP Frequently Asked Questions

 

This is out of date, The most recent FAQ is on the PTP wiki.

 

List of FAQs

Q1: How do I download PTP?

A: The 1.1.0 release of the PTP Core software (That is, the parallel runtime and parallel debugger) is available for Linux and Mac OS.

You can download it from the PTP download page; check regularly there for new releases, too.

PTP also requires OpenMPI v1.0.2 or v1.2 for the PTP Core functionality.

After downloading, be sure to run the shell script to build for your machine... see the release notes and installation instructions.

The PTP Parallel Language Development tools (PLDT) - formerly named MPI Development tools - and Photran, for Fortran development, are available as well, on more platforms. See the PTP downloads page.

Q2: What version of Eclipse and CDT do I need?

A: PTP and PLDT 1.1.0 are designed to work with Eclipse 3.2.x and CDT 3.1.x.

Q3: What version of MPI do I need to run PTP?

A: Currently PTP (Release 1.1.0, March 2007) requires OpenMPI v1.0.2 or v1.2.

Why OpenMPI? As far as the main PTP (PTP Core) is concerned, OpenMPI is very different from other implementations of MPI. OpenMPI is a complete rewrite and combines work from four different MPI implementations. It also provides a new runtime layer called Open Runtime Environment (OpenRTE) which PTP relies heavily on for OpenMPI support in the current version.

For the PLDT only (no PTP Core), there should be no difference between the different versions of MPI, such as OpenMPI and LamMPI. You just need to configure your project to be built using mpicc rather than gcc, and to specify the include path to the MPI header files. This should be described in the PLDT help.

Q4: What platforms and runtimes are supported by PTP now?

A: The current release of core PTP runs only on:
Open MPI runtime + debugging on Linux (i386/x86_64/ppc)
Open MPI runtime + debugging on Mac OS X 10.4 (PowerPC)

The PLDT will run anywhere Eclipse 3.2 and CDT 3.1 will run. It simply requires any version of MPI (specifically, its header files) to aid in the search for MPI artifacts. And an OpenMP header file, if OpenMP analysis is needed.

Q5: I'm seeing (a) not finding many symbols when building PTP, or (b) [some incorrect behavior, need to document what the symptoms are] when running PTP. What's wrong?

A: Make sure your PATH has OpenMPI ahead of any other MPI implementation you have installed.

Make sure you ran the shell script (sh BUILD) to finish the install for your machine.

Also, see the "Troubleshooting" section of the Release Notes and installation instructions.

Q6: How do I install OpenMPI?

A: Download the latest 1.2 version of OpenMPI from the OpenMPI download site.

See the release notes for details on installing OpenMPI.

At this point it's a good idea to run a small mpi program to test you have installed OpenMPI correctly. 

mpicc testMPI.c -o testMPI
mpirun -np 2 testMPI

Q7: How do I build PTP myself?

A: See the PTP build procedure instructions. [May not be updated for 1.1]

Q8: I see the error popup "There was an error starting the OMPI proxy runtime. The path to 'orte_server' or 'orted' may be incorrect. The 'orted' binary MUST be in your PATH to be found by 'orte_server'. Try checking the console log or error logs for more detailed information."

A: If you have tried the things suggested in the error message (including putting OpenMPI in your PATH), make sure you have also killed any previous ompi or orte processes. See instructions for killing old orte/ompi processes with cleanupOmpi.

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