[FLASH-USERS] investigating runtime failures

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 11 Dec 2017, Kokron, Daniel S. (ARC-606.2)[CSRA, LLC] wrote:

> FLASH users,
> 
> We have a user on the Pleiades system who is experiencing unexplained 
> run time failures while using a variant of FLASH-4.2.2.  The error 
> message indicates memory corruption, possibly related to memory used for 
> MPI communication, but we haven't been able to isolate the cause.
> 
> Is anyone aware of changes since FLASH-4.2.2 that might have addressed this type of failure mode?
> 
> Daniel Kokron
> NASA Ames (ARC-TN)
> SciCon group


Daniel,

Without more information about the run time failures it is hard to say 
whether the cause may have been removed since FLASH 4.2.2.  But that 
version of FLASH was released nearly 3.5 years ago, while FLASH 4.5 was 
released only 3 days ago, and it is quite likely that among the changes in 
between there has been a related fix.  In fact I am sure there has been at 
least some change that relates to "memory used for MPI communication".

The user should be encouraged to try a newer FLASH version. It is likely 
that FLASH 4.5 can be used in place of 4.2.2 without major (or any) 
changes.

There have been mentions of MPI-related failures on "pleiades" in the 
mailing list before. I do not know whether they are related, or whether 
and how they have been resolved. The search field at the bottom of <URL: 
http://flash.uchicago.edu/site/flashcode/user_support/> can be useful for 
finding related messages in the mailing list archives.

Klaus