OpenPBS config.guess File (Force Mod) For An AMD64 (IA64) Installation

In the process of setting up the CIA cluster for DMol3 (Accelrys) and Gaussian calculations. The use of a batch queuing system is recommended by Accelrys to take advantage of available resources (as they become available). The only open-source package they put their name to is OpenPBS (at openpbs.org). Compilation on a 64bit dual core AMD Opteron box (or any 64bit Linux system) gives the following error message.

a] [../OpenPBS ]# ./configure
creating cache ./config.cache
checking host system type... Invalid configuration `ia64-pc-linux-gnuoldld': machine `ia64-pc' not recognized

Invalid configuration `ia64-pc-linux': machine `ia64-pc' not recognized
configure: error: config.sub failed on ia64-pc-linux

The problem is that OpenPBS's (terribly out-of-date) auto-config script for configure doesn't know 64bit Linux out of the box. The solution to this is to not let configure guess the machine type. This is done by modifying a single line in the config.guess file located in the OpenPBS "../buildutils/" directory.

You can either go into the config.guess file and change the line

b] #UNAME_MACHINE=`(uname -m) 2>/dev/null` || UNAME_MACHINE=unknown

to

c] UNAME_MACHINE=i686

or download the altered config.guess file HERE. The downloaded file has a .txt extension to it (in case your browser gets confused) which you'll have to delete when you download it

d] mv config.guess.txt config.guess

Just replace the existing config.guess file with this new one and ./configure away.

P.S. I'm doing this (these) installation(s) with OpenSuse 10.0. The default installation for OpenSuse was not designed for programmers (as I rant about HERE). You'll need to Yast gcc and tcl/tk packages to make OpenPBS (and just about everything else) compile. If you've not gotten that far yet, just install everything and accept the lost 6 GBs to peace of mind (and don't ask about fortran).

4 Replies to “OpenPBS config.guess File (Force Mod) For An AMD64 (IA64) Installation”

  1. why not use Torque from Cluster Resources? I believe it claims more stability, and reliablity while still have the same interfaces.

  2. Absolutely. Beginning the week of July 17th, my inbox became flooded with, to my shock, email from the OpenPBS support list that all appeared to sing the praises of Torque from Cluster Resources (that's… clusterresources.com/…/torque-resource-manager.php. I suspect that Walid's comment has something to do with this barrage of emails). I'm not sure exactly why, as I would have expected the OpenPBS people to NOT let such emails go through, had they been reading them. That said, OpenPBS support is famously NOT, and so I could see emails sliding or the OpenPBS project being involuntarily (but happily) migrated away from the commercial service. I'm gonna give it a go at some point and will post accordingly (in case anyone's interested. Prod me for info).

    http://www.clusterresources.com/pages/products/torque-resource-manager.php

  3. I did not that there is still an openPBS mailing list, you must mean the torque-users. I have stumbled in your site because i am researching the problems that openpbs could have with dual core amd64 systems, as we are trying to move away from OpenPBs but we could not conivnce all users. let me know if you stumble into more limitations of openpbs

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