Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: dreeb@arlut.utexas.edu (David Reeb)
Subject: help a clueless undergrad?.. please
Organization: Applied Research Labs - The University of Texas at Austin
Date: 2 Jun 1995 13:50:43 -0500
Message-ID: <3qnmi3$i1t@csdsun1.arlut.utexas.edu>


OK, here's the situation:  I am working for a research lab in the 
computer science department and my boss has asked me to see if I can 
install and get PVM to work.  The machines are a Sun2000 and a 
SPARCstation, both running Solaris 2.x.  I am only trying to use 
PVM on these two machines right now.

I think I have installed it right, so I am now trying to run some of
the example programs that came with the package.  I ran into several 
problems and I read through what documentation I could find.  So 
either there's nothing in the stuff I read that can help me or, and 
probably more likely, what I did read just didn't sink in.  I am very 
inexperienced when it comes to  networks and parallel computing, so 
any advice will help; hell this is even my first post to a newsgroup!  
(I hope that I don't end up irritating everybody with my ignorance.)

The first thing I noticed when adding and deleting machines to and from
the PVM, is that I could add both machines from the Sun, but not from
the SPARC.  So to get more than one machine configured into the PVM,
I must do it from the Sun.  (This might be why the next stuff doesn't
work, but I am as I said clueless.)

I tried the "hello, hello_other" example and it seems to work fine.  
But I then tried the "master, slave"  example and I got errors if I 
gave a number greater than 7 or 8 when it asked for the number of 
slave programs.  These were the two types of messages I got:

   libpvm [t40002]: ref = -1 on page -512
   libpvm [t40002]: peer_conn() shmat to t40004: Too many open files

And for every one of the first kind of error there was a slave still
'alive' which I had to kill.  Also sometimes the program would hang up
and sometimes even core dump and quit.


Thank you ahead of time for taking the time to read this, even if not 
to respond.  

?? clueless ??

dreeb@arlut.utexas.edu

