While running CASA in HTCondor seems to work without issue, running mpicasa in HTCondor produces several issues.
RuntimeError("Failed to create %s/.matplotlib
The following is an example of the error mpicasa produces when running in HTCondor and ${HOME}/.matplotlib isn't already populated. This happens when, for example, we set HOME=${HOME:=$TMPDIR} because we are running on a remote site or simulating it. We have to set HOME to something because mpicasa expects it and HTCondor doesn't set HOME by default.
After many attempts to get matplotlib to generate its own .matplotlib, the results were always inconsistent. So, the solution was to add a poplulated .matplotlib directory to transfer_input_files for each DAG or job.
471 raise RuntimeError("Failed to create %s/.matplotlib; consider setting MPLCONFIGDIR to a writable directory for matplotlib configuration data"%h)
472
--> 473 os.mkdir(p)
474
475 return p
OSError: [Errno 17] File exists: '/lustre/aoc/admin/tmp/condor/nmpost071/executedir_130008/.matplotlib'
In [2]: Do you really want to exit ([y]/n)?
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casa has exited due to process rank 1 with PID 130184 on
node nmpost071 exiting improperly. There are three reasons this could occur:
1. this process did not call "init" before exiting, but others in
the job did. This can cause a job to hang indefinitely while it waits
for all processes to call "init". By rule, if one process calls "init",
then ALL processes must call "init" prior to termination.
2. this process called "init", but exited without calling "finalize".
By rule, all processes that call "init" MUST call "finalize" prior to
exiting or it will be considered an "abnormal termination"
3. this process called "MPI_Abort" or "orte_abort" and the mca parameter
orte_create_session_dirs is set to false. In this case, the run-time cannot
detect that the abort call was an abnormal termination. Hence, the only
error message you will receive is this one.
This may have caused other processes in the application to be
terminated by signals sent by casa (as reported here).
You can avoid this message by specifying -quiet on the casa command line.
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Warning about /tmp on a networked filesystem
The warning about /tmp is only when /tmp is a network filesystem (Lustre or NFS). This is Open MPI producing this warning and happens because HTCondor bind mounts /tmp and /var/tmp for its jobs to its scratch area and we currently use Lustre for the scratch areas.
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WARNING: Open MPI will create a shared memory backing file in a
directory that appears to be mounted on a network filesystem.
Creating the shared memory backup file on a network file system, such
as NFS or Lustre is not recommended -- it may cause excessive network
traffic to your file servers and/or cause shared memory traffic in
Open MPI to be much slower than expected.
You may want to check what the typical temporary directory is on your
node. Possible sources of the location of this temporary directory
include the $TEMPDIR, $TEMP, and $TMP environment variables.
Note, too, that system administrators can set a list of filesystems
where Open MPI is disallowed from creating temporary files by setting
the MCA parameter "orte_no_session_dir".
Local host: nmpost071
Filename: /lustre/aoc/admin/tmp/condor/nmpost071/execute/dir_2906/openmpi-sessions-krowe@nmpost071_0/41160/1/shared_mem_pool.nmpost071
You can set the MCA paramter shmem_mmap_enable_nfs_warning to 0 to
disable this message.
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A way to remove this warning and hopefully also prevent OpenMPI from using a network filesystem for its shared memory backup file is to do something like the following
mkdir -p /dev/shm/mpicasa
export OMPI_MCA_orte_tmpdir_base=/dev/shm/mpicasa