[mpich-discuss] bug when used with valgrind

[Evren Yurtesen IB]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2013, Dave Goodell wrote:

> On Jan 23, 2013, at 12:22 PM CST, Evren Yurtesen IB wrote:
>
>> It appears there are problems with mpich2 packages provided by ubuntu 12.04/12.10 etc. I think the problem is the compile time arguments they use when building them.
>>
>> I made a bug report to ubuntu launchpad but they suggested I should contact you also. Can somebody please have a look and comment on the bug report?
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mpich2/+bug/1045326
>
> Pavan Balaji, who commented 2012-09-03, represents "us" on this matter.

Oh ok, but should I create a bug report as he suggested?

> To me the problem just looks like a fundamental disagreement/incompatibility between BLCR and Valgrind (at least for certain versions of each package).  See this BLCR thread: https://hpcrdm.lbl.gov/pipermail/checkpoint/2011-September/000311.html
>
> Based on what Paul said in that link and some cursory googling, it sounds like that issue was never upstreamed to the Valgrind folks.

I will try to poke valgrind developers also :)

> I agree with you that the easiest way to resolve the Launchpad bug is to just omit the checkpointing arguments, although this has the downside of disabling this functionality.  A more involved fix would be to patch the BLCR library in the fashion mentioned in the lbl.gov link above.

I think it is already non-functional for Ubuntu 12.04+ versions. There is 
also a bug report about BLCR because it does not work with 3.x kernels 
anymore and all 12.* Ubuntu versions use 3.x kernels:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/blcr/+bug/804943

Also checkpoint homepage confirms this (last version supports up to kernel 
2.6.38):
https://ftg.lbl.gov/projects/CheckpointRestart/

So, I think it may be possible to convince Ubuntu package makers to remove 
checkpoint options which are not useful anyway. But I am not sure who to 
inform about this problem at this point.

Thanks,
Evren