[Paraview] Compiling Paraview on cluster

Tue Nov 1 16:55:43 EDT 2011

Burlen,

Thanks for your explanations, they help me quite a bit.
We don¹t have graphics hardware on the cluster. Although I am not sure if
the graphics part in Sandy Bridge processors is suitable for some tasks.
It would be worth exploring if these part can provide better efficiency
than mesa.

Would you mind sharing the the correct python syntax for mesa build if you
have it handy?
Are there standard set of things which needs to be enabled in Paraview
build, so as to be compatible with binary distribution of Paraview? If so
what are they or if there is a standard flag in build options.

Cheers
--Amit 

On 11/1/11 2:55 PM, "Burlen Loring" <bloring at lbl.gov> wrote:

>One thing I should clarify:
>
>When I said the client and server apps can be compiled independently, I
>meant with respect to X11/and OpenGL options. You will need to be aware
>that other build options are not as flexible.  For instance if you want
>your users to be able to use binaries from Kitware web site, you need to
>enable the same plugin options, otherwise the server could crash for
>instance when opening files. This is my experience up to ver 3.10, I
>hope that in the future releases PV will be more intelligent about only
>using a server side object if it's present.
>
>On 11/01/2011 12:43 PM, Burlen Loring wrote:
>> Hi Amit,
>>> 1.  Do I compile paraview with OSMesa or Xlib? (X is available on the
>>> cluster, will this require X on client?). Is it better to avoid X?
>> The client and server are separate apps and can be compiled
>> independently. If you have graphics hardware on your cluster you will
>> want to use this and link against the accelerated open gl libraries. I
>> believe this requires X. If you do not have graphics hardware then you
>> can safely disable X on the server side and use OSMesa.
>>>    2.  Do I compile with QT or without on cluster
>> The server app does not need qt, and you can safely compile it without
>> qt. The client app obviously needs Qt. You could provide a client with
>> the idea that users run the client remotely (eg using nx, or vnc) or
>> you could ask them to install the client on their workstation and
>> provide a configuration script so that they can launch jobs on your
>> cluster. The former seems to be easier for the users while in my
>> experience the latter provides better performance and usability. With
>> the caveat that it depends on the network connection of your users.
>>>    3.  Which compiler and which MPI to use (we have intel and gnu
>>> compilers, MPI, mvapich and openmpi) ?
>> Usually this choice is somewhat arbitrary. ParaView can compile with
>> issue using any of the combinations. Intel is supposed to produce
>> faster code than gcc and be better at optimization such as auto
>> vectorizing. Before deciding on mvapich or openmpi you should
>> determine if either has an advantage given your clusters interconnect.
>>
>> The error you report is an issue in Mesa, a syntax error, probably
>> because they used syntax that is not supported by your version of
>> python. I recently encountered similar issues and simply modified the
>> Mesa source code to use the older more universal syntax. You/we should
>> probably complain about this to the Mesa developers since it is a pain
>> the neck!
>>
>> Hope it helps
>> Burlen
>>
>> On 11/01/2011 11:58 AM, Chourasia, Amit wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I am trying to compile paraview for general usage on one of our
>>> clusters at SDSC.
>>> I wanted to ask what are the common paraview installation practices
>>> that are useful for general purpose. I would certainly need to
>>> compile the paraview server
>>>
>>>    1.  Do I compile paraview with OSMesa or Xlib? (X is available on
>>> the cluster, will this require X on client?). Is it better to avoid X?
>>>    2.  Do I compile with QT or without on cluster
>>>    3.  Which compiler and which MPI to use (we have intel and gnu
>>> compilers, MPI, mvapich and openmpi) ?
>>>
>>> I looked at the following page and unsure how to go about this
>>> http://paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_And_Mesa_3D
>>>
>>> At the moment I am stuck on mesa compilation and the choice I make
>>> here will determine Paraview's compilation.
>>> When I try to compile Mesa-7.11 or Mesa-7.9 I get the following error
>>>
>>> python2 -t -O -O builtins/tools/generate_builtins.py
>>> ./builtin_compiler>  builtin_function.cpp || rm -f builtin_function.cpp
>>>    File "builtins/tools/generate_builtins.py", line 28
>>>      with open(filename) as f:
>>>              ^
>>> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>
>>> I have tried to use
>>> A) make linux-x86_64
>>> B) ./configure --with-driver=xlib
>>> --prefix=/work/achourasia/mesa_build/ --disable-gallium
>>> --with-gallium-drivers=""
>>> If I don¹t pass --disable-gallium  --with-gallium-drivers="" the
>>> configure fails
>>> checking for llvm-config... no
>>> configure: error: LLVM is required to build Gallium R300 on x86 and
>>> x86_64
>>>
>>> Please advice
>>> Thanks
>>> --Amit
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>