.. _options: Configuring SimGrid =================== .. raw:: html

A number of options can be given at runtime to change the default SimGrid behavior. For a complete list of all configuration options accepted by the SimGrid version used in your simulator, simply pass the --help configuration flag to your program. If some of the options are not documented on this page, this is a bug that you should please report so that we can fix it. Note that some of the options presented here may not be available in your simulators, depending on the :ref:`compile-time options ` that you used. Setting Configuration Items --------------------------- There is several way to pass configuration options to the simulators. The most common way is to use the ``--cfg`` command line argument. For example, to set the item ``Item`` to the value ``Value``, simply type the following on the command-line: .. code-block:: shell my_simulator --cfg=Item:Value (other arguments) Several ``--cfg`` command line arguments can naturally be used. If you need to include spaces in the argument, don't forget to quote the argument. You can even escape the included quotes (write @' for ' if you have your argument between '). Another solution is to use the ```` tag in the platform file. The only restriction is that this tag must occure before the first platform element (be it ````, ````, ```` or whatever). The ```` tag takes an ``id`` attribute, but it is currently ignored so you don't really need to pass it. The important part is that within that tag, you can pass one or several ```` tags to specify the configuration to use. For example, setting ``Item`` to ``Value`` can be done by adding the following to the beginning of your platform file: .. code-block:: xml A last solution is to pass your configuration directly in your program with :cpp:func:`simgrid::s4u::Engine::set_config` or :cpp:func:`MSG_config`. .. code-block:: cpp #include int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { simgrid::s4u::Engine e(&argc, argv); e->set_config("Item:Value"); // Rest of your code } .. _options_list: Existing Configuration Items ---------------------------- .. note:: The full list can be retrieved by passing ``--help`` and ``--help-cfg`` to an executable that uses SimGrid. - **clean-atexit:** :ref:`cfg=clean-atexit` - **contexts/factory:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/factory` - **contexts/guard-size:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/guard-size` - **contexts/nthreads:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/nthreads` - **contexts/parallel-threshold:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/parallel-threshold` - **contexts/stack-size:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/stack-size` - **contexts/synchro:** :ref:`cfg=contexts/synchro` - **cpu/maxmin-selective-update:** :ref:`Cpu Optimization Level ` - **cpu/model:** :ref:`options_model_select` - **cpu/optim:** :ref:`Cpu Optimization Level ` - **exception/cutpath:** :ref:`cfg=exception/cutpath` - **host/model:** :ref:`options_model_select` - **maxmin/precision:** :ref:`cfg=maxmin/precision` - **maxmin/concurrency-limit:** :ref:`cfg=maxmin/concurrency-limit` - **msg/debug-multiple-use:** :ref:`cfg=msg/debug-multiple-use` - **model-check:** :ref:`options_modelchecking` - **model-check/checkpoint:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/checkpoint` - **model-check/communications-determinism:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/communications-determinism` - **model-check/dot-output:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/dot-output` - **model-check/hash:** :ref:`cfg=model-checker/hash` - **model-check/max-depth:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/max-depth` - **model-check/property:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/property` - **model-check/record:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/record` - **model-check/reduction:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/reduction` - **model-check/replay:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/replay` - **model-check/send-determinism:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/send-determinism` - **model-check/sparse-checkpoint:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/sparse-checkpoint` - **model-check/termination:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/termination` - **model-check/timeout:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/timeout` - **model-check/visited:** :ref:`cfg=model-check/visited` - **network/bandwidth-factor:** :ref:`cfg=network/bandwidth-factor` - **network/crosstraffic:** :ref:`cfg=network/crosstraffic` - **network/latency-factor:** :ref:`cfg=network/latency-factor` - **network/maxmin-selective-update:** :ref:`Network Optimization Level ` - **network/model:** :ref:`options_model_select` - **network/optim:** :ref:`Network Optimization Level ` - **network/TCP-gamma:** :ref:`cfg=network/TCP-gamma` - **network/weight-S:** :ref:`cfg=network/weight-S` - **ns3/TcpModel:** :ref:`options_pls` - **path:** :ref:`cfg=path` - **plugin:** :ref:`cfg=plugin` - **simix/breakpoint:** :ref:`cfg=simix/breakpoint` - **storage/max_file_descriptors:** :ref:`cfg=storage/max_file_descriptors` - **surf/precision:** :ref:`cfg=surf/precision` - **For collective operations of SMPI,** please refer to Section :ref:`cfg=smpi/coll-selector` - **smpi/async-small-thresh:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/async-small-thresh` - **smpi/bw-factor:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/bw-factor` - **smpi/coll-selector:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/coll-selector` - **smpi/comp-adjustment-file:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/comp-adjustment-file` - **smpi/cpu-threshold:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/cpu-threshold` - **smpi/display-timing:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/display-timing` - **smpi/grow-injected-times:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/grow-injected-times` - **smpi/host-speed:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/host-speed` - **smpi/IB-penalty-factors:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/IB-penalty-factors` - **smpi/iprobe:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/iprobe` - **smpi/iprobe-cpu-usage:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/iprobe-cpu-usage` - **smpi/init:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/init` - **smpi/keep-temps:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/keep-temps` - **smpi/lat-factor:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/lat-factor` - **smpi/ois:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/ois` - **smpi/or:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/or` - **smpi/os:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/os` - **smpi/papi-events:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/papi-events` - **smpi/privatization:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/privatization` - **smpi/privatize-libs:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/privatize-libs` - **smpi/send-is-detached-thresh:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/send-is-detached-thresh` - **smpi/shared-malloc:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/shared-malloc` - **smpi/shared-malloc-hugepage:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/shared-malloc-hugepage` - **smpi/simulate-computation:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/simulate-computation` - **smpi/test:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/test` - **smpi/wtime:** :ref:`cfg=smpi/wtime` - **Tracing configuration options** can be found in Section :ref:`tracing_tracing_options` - **storage/model:** :ref:`options_model_select` - **verbose-exit:** :ref:`cfg=verbose-exit` - **vm/model:** :ref:`options_model_select` .. _options_model: Configuring the Platform Models ------------------------------- .. _options_model_select: Choosing the Platform Models ............................ SimGrid comes with several network, CPU and storage models built in, and you can change the used model at runtime by changing the passed configuration. The three main configuration items are given below. For each of these items, passing the special ``help`` value gives you a short description of all possible values (for example, ``--cfg=network/model:help`` will present all provided network models). Also, ``--help-models`` should provide information about all models for all existing resources. - ``network/model``: specify the used network model. Possible values: - **LV08 (default one):** Realistic network analytic model (slow-start modeled by multiplying latency by 13.01, bandwidth by .97; bottleneck sharing uses a payload of S=20537 for evaluating RTT). Described in `Accuracy Study and Improvement of Network Simulation in the SimGrid Framework `_. - **Constant:** Simplistic network model where all communication take a constant time (one second). This model provides the lowest realism, but is (marginally) faster. - **SMPI:** Realistic network model specifically tailored for HPC settings (accurate modeling of slow start with correction factors on three intervals: < 1KiB, < 64 KiB, >= 64 KiB). This model can be :ref:`further configured `. - **IB:** Realistic network model specifically tailored for HPC settings with InfiniBand networks (accurate modeling contention behavior, based on the model explained in `this PhD work `_. This model can be :ref:`further configured `. - **CM02:** Legacy network analytic model. Very similar to LV08, but without corrective factors. The timings of small messages are thus poorly modeled. This model is described in `A Network Model for Simulation of Grid Application `_. - **Reno/Reno2/Vegas:** Models from Steven H. Low using lagrange_solve instead of lmm_solve (experts only; check the code for more info). - **NS3** (only available if you compiled SimGrid accordingly): Use the packet-level network simulators as network models (see :ref:`pls_ns3`). This model can be :ref:`further configured `. - ``cpu/model``: specify the used CPU model. We have only one model for now: - **Cas01:** Simplistic CPU model (time=size/power) - ``host/model``: The host concept is the aggregation of a CPU with a network card. Three models exists, but actually, only 2 of them are interesting. The "compound" one is simply due to the way our internal code is organized, and can easily be ignored. So at the end, you have two host models: The default one allows to aggregate an existing CPU model with an existing network model, but does not allow parallel tasks because these beasts need some collaboration between the network and CPU model. That is why, ptask_07 is used by default when using SimDag. - **default:** Default host model. Currently, CPU:Cas01 and network:LV08 (with cross traffic enabled) - **compound:** Host model that is automatically chosen if you change the network and CPU models - **ptask_L07:** Host model somehow similar to Cas01+CM02 but allowing "parallel tasks", that are intended to model the moldable tasks of the grid scheduling literature. - ``storage/model``: specify the used storage model. Only one model is provided so far. - ``vm/model``: specify the model for virtual machines. Only one model is provided so far. .. todo: make 'compound' the default host model. .. _options_model_optim: Optimization Level .................. The network and CPU models that are based on lmm_solve (that is, all our analytical models) accept specific optimization configurations. - items ``network/optim`` and ``cpu/optim`` (both default to 'Lazy'): - **Lazy:** Lazy action management (partial invalidation in lmm + heap in action remaining). - **TI:** Trace integration. Highly optimized mode when using availability traces (only available for the Cas01 CPU model for now). - **Full:** Full update of remaining and variables. Slow but may be useful when debugging. - items ``network/maxmin-selective-update`` and ``cpu/maxmin-selective-update``: configure whether the underlying should be lazily updated or not. It should have no impact on the computed timings, but should speed up the computation. |br| It is still possible to disable this feature because it can reveal counter-productive in very specific scenarios where the interaction level is high. In particular, if all your communication share a given backbone link, you should disable it: without it, a simple regular loop is used to update each communication. With it, each of them is still updated (because of the dependency induced by the backbone), but through a complicated and slow pattern that follows the actual dependencies. .. _cfg=maxmin/precision: .. _cfg=surf/precision: Numerical Precision ................... **Option** ``maxmin/precision`` **Default:** 0.00001 (in flops or bytes) |br| **Option** ``surf/precision`` **Default:** 0.00001 (in seconds) The analytical models handle a lot of floating point values. It is possible to change the epsilon used to update and compare them through this configuration item. Changing it may speedup the simulation by discarding very small actions, at the price of a reduced numerical precision. You can modify separately the precision used to manipulate timings (in seconds) and the one used to manipulate amounts of work (in flops or bytes). .. _cfg=maxmin/concurrency-limit: Concurrency Limit ................. **Option** ``maxmin/concurrency-limit`` **Default:** -1 (no limit) The maximum number of variables per resource can be tuned through this option. You can have as many simultaneous actions per resources as you want. If your simulation presents a very high level of concurrency, it may help to use e.g. 100 as a value here. It means that at most 100 actions can consume a resource at a given time. The extraneous actions are queued and wait until the amount of concurrency of the considered resource lowers under the given boundary. Such limitations help both to the simulation speed and simulation accuracy on highly constrained scenarios, but the simulation speed suffers of this setting on regular (less constrained) scenarios so it is off by default. .. _options_model_network: Configuring the Network Model ............................. .. _cfg=network/TCP-gamma: Maximal TCP Window Size ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ **Option** ``network/TCP-gamma`` **Default:** 4194304 The analytical models need to know the maximal TCP window size to take the TCP congestion mechanism into account. On Linux, this value can be retrieved using the following commands. Both give a set of values, and you should use the last one, which is the maximal size. .. code-block:: shell cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem # gives the sender window cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem # gives the receiver window .. _cfg=smpi/IB-penalty-factors: .. _cfg=network/bandwidth-factor: .. _cfg=network/latency-factor: .. _cfg=network/weight-S: Correcting Important Network Parameters ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SimGrid can take network irregularities such as a slow startup or changing behavior depending on the message size into account. You should not change these values unless you really know what you're doing. The corresponding values were computed through data fitting one the timings of packet-level simulators, as described in `Accuracy Study and Improvement of Network Simulation in the SimGrid Framework `_. If you are using the SMPI model, these correction coefficients are themselves corrected by constant values depending on the size of the exchange. By default SMPI uses factors computed on the Stampede Supercomputer at TACC, with optimal deployment of processes on nodes. Again, only hardcore experts should bother about this fact. InfiniBand network behavior can be modeled through 3 parameters ``smpi/IB-penalty-factors:"βe;βs;γs"``, as explained in `this PhD thesis `_. .. todo:: This section should be rewritten, and actually explain the options network/bandwidth-factor, network/latency-factor, network/weight-S. .. _cfg=network/crosstraffic: Simulating Cross-Traffic ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Since SimGrid v3.7, cross-traffic effects can be taken into account in analytical simulations. It means that ongoing and incoming communication flows are treated independently. In addition, the LV08 model adds 0.05 of usage on the opposite direction for each new created flow. This can be useful to simulate some important TCP phenomena such as ack compression. For that to work, your platform must have two links for each pair of interconnected hosts. An example of usable platform is available in ``examples/platforms/crosstraffic.xml``. This is activated through the ``network/crosstraffic`` item, that can be set to 0 (disable this feature) or 1 (enable it). Note that with the default host model this option is activated by default. .. _cfg=smpi/async-small-thresh: Simulating Asyncronous Send ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (this configuration item is experimental and may change or disapear) It is possible to specify that messages below a certain size will be sent as soon as the call to MPI_Send is issued, without waiting for the correspondant receive. This threshold can be configured through the ``smpi/async-small-thresh`` item. The default value is 0. This behavior can also be manually set for mailboxes, by setting the receiving mode of the mailbox with a call to :cpp:func:`MSG_mailbox_set_async`. After this, all messages sent to this mailbox will have this behavior regardless of the message size. This value needs to be smaller than or equals to the threshold set at @ref options_model_smpi_detached , because asynchronous messages are meant to be detached as well. .. _options_pls: Configuring NS3 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ **Option** ``ns3/TcpModel`` **Default:** "default" (NS3 default) When using NS3, there is an extra item ``ns3/TcpModel``, corresponding to the ``ns3::TcpL4Protocol::SocketType`` configuration item in NS3. The only valid values (enforced on the SimGrid side) are 'default' (no change to the NS3 configuration), 'NewReno' or 'Reno' or 'Tahoe'. Configuring the Storage model ............................. .. _cfg=storage/max_file_descriptors: File Descriptor Cound per Host ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ **Option** ``storage/max_file_descriptors`` **Default:** 1024 Each host maintains a fixed-size array of its file descriptors. You can change its size through this item to either enlarge it if your application requires it or to reduce it to save memory space. .. _cfg=plugin: Activating Plugins ------------------ SimGrid plugins allow to extend the framework without changing its source code directly. Read the source code of the existing plugins to learn how to do so (in ``src/plugins``), and ask your questions to the usual channels (Stack Overflow, Mailing list, IRC). The basic idea is that plugins usually register callbacks to some signals of interest. If they need to store some information about a given object (Link, CPU or Actor), they do so through the use of a dedicated object extension. Some of the existing plugins can be activated from the command line, meaning that you can activate them from the command line without any modification to your simulation code. For example, you can activate the host energy plugin by adding ``--cfg=plugin:host_energy`` to your command line. Here is the full list of plugins that can be activated this way: - **host_energy:** keeps track of the energy dissipated by computations. More details in @ref plugin_energy. - **link_energy:** keeps track of the energy dissipated by communications. More details in @ref SURF_plugin_energy. - **host_load:** keeps track of the computational load. More details in @ref plugin_load. .. _options_modelchecking: Configuring the Model-Checking ------------------------------ To enable the SimGrid model-checking support the program should be executed using the simgrid-mc wrapper: .. code-block:: shell simgrid-mc ./my_program Safety properties are expressed as assertions using the function :cpp:func:`void MC_assert(int prop)`. .. _cfg=model-check/property: Specifying a liveness property .............................. **Option** ``model-check/property`` **Default:** unset If you want to specify liveness properties, you have to pass them on the command line, specifying the name of the file containing the property, as formatted by the ltl2ba program. .. code-block:: shell simgrid-mc ./my_program --cfg=model-check/property: .. _cfg=model-check/checkpoint: Going for Stateful Verification ............................... By default, the system is backtracked to its initial state to explore another path instead of backtracking to the exact step before the fork that we want to explore (this is called stateless verification). This is done this way because saving intermediate states can rapidly exhaust the available memory. If you want, you can change the value of the ``model-check/checkpoint`` item. For example, ``--cfg=model-check/checkpoint:1`` asks to take a checkpoint every step. Beware, this will certainly explode your memory. Larger values are probably better, make sure to experiment a bit to find the right setting for your specific system. .. _cfg=model-check/reduction: Specifying the kind of reduction ................................ The main issue when using the model-checking is the state space explosion. To counter that problem, you can chose a exploration reduction techniques with ``--cfg=model-check/reduction:``. For now, this configuration variable can take 2 values: - **none:** Do not apply any kind of reduction (mandatory for now for liveness properties) - **dpor:** Apply Dynamic Partial Ordering Reduction. Only valid if you verify local safety properties (default value for safety checks). There is unfortunately no silver bullet here, and the most efficient reduction techniques cannot be applied to any properties. In particular, the DPOR method cannot be applied on liveness properties since our implementation of DPOR may break some cycles, while cycles are very important to the soundness of the exploration for liveness properties. .. _cfg=model-check/visited: Size of Cycle Detection Set ........................... In order to detect cycles, the model-checker needs to check if a new explored state is in fact the same state than a previous one. For that, the model-checker can take a snapshot of each visited state: this snapshot is then used to compare it with subsequent states in the exploration graph. The ``model-check/visited`` item is the maximum number of states which are stored in memory. If the maximum number of snapshotted state is reached, some states will be removed from the memory and some cycles might be missed. Small values can lead to incorrect verifications, but large value can exhaust your memory, so choose carefully. By default, no state is snapshotted and cycles cannot be detected. .. _cfg=model-check/termination: Non-Termination Detection ......................... The ``model-check/termination`` configuration item can be used to report if a non-termination execution path has been found. This is a path with a cycle which means that the program might never terminate. This only works in safety mode, not in liveness mode. This options is disabled by default. .. _cfg=model-check/dot-output: Dot Output .......... If set, the ``model-check/dot-output`` configuration item is the name of a file in which to write a dot file of the path leading the found property (safety or liveness violation) as well as the cycle for liveness properties. This dot file can then fed to the graphviz dot tool to generate an corresponding graphical representation. .. _cfg=model-check/max-depth: Exploration Depth Limit ....................... The ``model-checker/max-depth`` can set the maximum depth of the exploration graph of the model-checker. If this limit is reached, a logging message is sent and the results might not be exact. By default, there is not depth limit. .. _cfg=model-check/timeout: Handling of Timeouts .................... By default, the model-checker does not handle timeout conditions: the `wait` operations never time out. With the ``model-check/timeout`` configuration item set to **yes**, the model-checker will explore timeouts of `wait` operations. .. _cfg=model-check/communications-determinism: .. _cfg=model-check/send-determinism: Communication Determinism ......................... The ``model-check/communications-determinism`` and ``model-check/send-determinism`` items can be used to select the communication determinism mode of the model-checker which checks determinism properties of the communications of an application. .. _cfg=model-check/sparse-checkpoint: Incremental Checkpoints ....................... When the model-checker is configured to take a snapshot of each explored state (with the ``model-checker/visited`` item), the memory consumption can rapidly reach GiB ou Tib of memory. However, for many workloads, the memory does not change much between different snapshots and taking a complete copy of each snapshot is a waste of memory. The ``model-check/sparse-checkpoint`` option item can be set to **yes** to avoid making a complete copy of each snapshot. Instead, each snapshot will be decomposed in blocks which will be stored separately. If multiple snapshots share the same block (or if the same block is used in the same snapshot), the same copy of the block will be shared leading to a reduction of the memory footprint. For many applications, this option considerably reduces the memory consumption. In somes cases, the model-checker might be slightly slower because of the time taken to manage the metadata about the blocks. In other cases however, this snapshotting strategy will be much faster by reducing the cache consumption. When the memory consumption is important, by avoiding to hit the swap or reducing the swap usage, this option might be much faster than the basic snapshotting strategy. This option is currently disabled by default. Verification Performance Considerations ....................................... The size of the stacks can have a huge impact on the memory consumption when using model-checking. By default, each snapshot will save a copy of the whole stacks and not only of the part which is really meaningful: you should expect the contribution of the memory consumption of the snapshots to be @f$ @mbox{number of processes} @times @mbox{stack size} @times @mbox{number of states} @f$. The ``model-check/sparse-checkpoint`` can be used to reduce the memory consumption by trying to share memory between the different snapshots. When compiled against the model checker, the stacks are not protected with guards: if the stack size is too small for your application, the stack will silently overflow on other parts of the memory (see :ref:`contexts/guard-size `). .. _cfg=model-checker/hash: State Hashing ............. Usually most of the time of the model-checker is spent comparing states. This process is complicated and consumes a lot of bandwidth and cache. In order to speedup the state comparison, the experimental ``model-checker/hash`` configuration item enables the computation of a hash summarizing as much information of the state as possible into a single value. This hash can be used to avoid most of the comparisons: the costly comparison is then only used when the hashes are identical. Currently most of the state is not included in the hash because the implementation was found to be buggy and this options is not as useful as it could be. For this reason, it is currently disabled by default. .. _cfg=model-check/record: .. _cfg=model-check/replay: Record/Replay of Verification ............................. As the model-checker keeps jumping at different places in the execution graph, it is difficult to understand what happens when trying to debug an application under the model-checker. Event the output of the program is difficult to interpret. Moreover, the model-checker does not behave nicely with advanced debugging tools such as valgrind. For those reason, to identify a trajectory in the execution graph with the model-checker and replay this trajcetory and without the model-checker black-magic but with more standard tools (such as a debugger, valgrind, etc.). For this reason, Simgrid implements an experimental record/replay functionnality in order to record a trajectory with the model-checker and replay it without the model-checker. When the model-checker finds an interesting path in the application execution graph (where a safety or liveness property is violated), it can generate an identifier for this path. To enable this behavious the ``model-check/record`` must be set to **yes**, which is not the case by default. Here is an example of output: .. code-block:: shell [ 0.000000] (0:@) Check a safety property [ 0.000000] (0:@) ************************** [ 0.000000] (0:@) *** PROPERTY NOT VALID *** [ 0.000000] (0:@) ************************** [ 0.000000] (0:@) Counter-example execution trace: [ 0.000000] (0:@) Path = 1/3;1/4 [ 0.000000] (0:@) [(1)Tremblay (app)] MC_RANDOM(3) [ 0.000000] (0:@) [(1)Tremblay (app)] MC_RANDOM(4) [ 0.000000] (0:@) Expanded states = 27 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Visited states = 68 [ 0.000000] (0:@) Executed transitions = 46 This path can then be replayed outside of the model-checker (and even in non-MC build of simgrid) by setting the ``model-check/replay`` item to the given path. The other options should be the same (but the model-checker should be disabled). The format and meaning of the path may change between different releases so the same release of Simgrid should be used for the record phase and the replay phase. Configuring the User Code Virtualization ---------------------------------------- .. _cfg=contexts/factory: Selecting the Virtualization Factory .................................... **Option** contexts/factory **Default:** "raw" In SimGrid, the user code is virtualized in a specific mechanism that allows the simulation kernel to control its execution: when a user process requires a blocking action (such as sending a message), it is interrupted, and only gets released when the simulated clock reaches the point where the blocking operation is done. This is explained graphically in the `relevant tutorial, available online `_. In SimGrid, the containers in which user processes are virtualized are called contexts. Several context factory are provided, and you can select the one you want to use with the ``contexts/factory`` configuration item. Some of the following may not exist on your machine because of portability issues. In any case, the default one should be the most effcient one (please report bugs if the auto-detection fails for you). They are approximately sorted here from the slowest to the most efficient: - **thread:** very slow factory using full featured threads (either pthreads or windows native threads). They are slow but very standard. Some debuggers or profilers only work with this factory. - **java:** Java applications are virtualized onto java threads (that are regular pthreads registered to the JVM) - **ucontext:** fast factory using System V contexts (Linux and FreeBSD only) - **boost:** This uses the `context implementation `_ of the boost library for a performance that is comparable to our raw implementation. |br| Install the relevant library (e.g. with the libboost-contexts-dev package on Debian/Ubuntu) and recompile SimGrid. - **raw:** amazingly fast factory using a context switching mechanism of our own, directly implemented in assembly (only available for x86 and amd64 platforms for now) and without any unneeded system call. The main reason to change this setting is when the debugging tools get fooled by the optimized context factories. Threads are the most debugging-friendly contextes, as they allow to set breakpoints anywhere with gdb and visualize backtraces for all processes, in order to debug concurrency issues. Valgrind is also more comfortable with threads, but it should be usable with all factories (Exception: the callgrind tool really dislikes raw and ucontext factories). .. _cfg=contexts/stack-size: Adapting the Stack Size ....................... **Option** ``contexts/stack-size`` **Default:** 8192 KiB Each virtualized used process is executed using a specific system stack. The size of this stack has a huge impact on the simulation scalability, but its default value is rather large. This is because the error messages that you get when the stack size is too small are rather disturbing: this leads to stack overflow (overwriting other stacks), leading to segfaults with corrupted stack traces. If you want to push the scalability limits of your code, you might want to reduce the ``contexts/stack-size`` item. Its default value is 8192 (in KiB), while our Chord simulation works with stacks as small as 16 KiB, for example. For the thread factory, the default value is the one of the system but you can still change it with this parameter. The operating system should only allocate memory for the pages of the stack which are actually used and you might not need to use this in most cases. However, this setting is very important when using the model checker (see :ref:`options_mc_perf`). .. _cfg=contexts/guard-size: Disabling Stack Guard Pages ........................... **Option** ``contexts/guard-size`` **Default** 1 page in most case (0 pages on Windows or with MC) A stack guard page is usually used which prevents the stack of a given actor from overflowing on another stack. But the performance impact may become prohibitive when the amount of actors increases. The option ``contexts/guard-size`` is the number of stack guard pages used. By setting it to 0, no guard pages will be used: in this case, you should avoid using small stacks (with :ref:`contexts/stack-size `) as the stack will silently overflow on other parts of the memory. When no stack guard page is created, stacks may then silently overflow on other parts of the memory if their size is too small for the application. .. _cfg=contexts/nthreads: .. _cfg=contexts/parallel-threshold: .. _cfg=contexts/synchro: Running User Code in Parallel ............................. Parallel execution of the user code is only considered stable in SimGrid v3.7 and higher, and mostly for MSG simulations. SMPI simulations may well fail in parallel mode. It is described in `INRIA RR-7653 `_. If you are using the **ucontext** or **raw** context factories, you can request to execute the user code in parallel. Several threads are launched, each of them handling as much user contexts at each run. To actiave this, set the ``contexts/nthreads`` item to the amount of cores that you have in your computer (or lower than 1 to have the amount of cores auto-detected). Even if you asked several worker threads using the previous option, you can request to start the parallel execution (and pay the associated synchronization costs) only if the potential parallelism is large enough. For that, set the ``contexts/parallel-threshold`` item to the minimal amount of user contexts needed to start the parallel execution. In any given simulation round, if that amount is not reached, the contexts will be run sequentially directly by the main thread (thus saving the synchronization costs). Note that this option is mainly useful when the grain of the user code is very fine, because our synchronization is now very efficient. When parallel execution is activated, you can choose the synchronization schema used with the ``contexts/synchro`` item, which value is either: - **futex:** ultra optimized synchronisation schema, based on futexes (fast user-mode mutexes), and thus only available on Linux systems. This is the default mode when available. - **posix:** slow but portable synchronisation using only POSIX primitives. - **busy_wait:** not really a synchronisation: the worker threads constantly request new contexts to execute. It should be the most efficient synchronisation schema, but it loads all the cores of your machine for no good reason. You probably prefer the other less eager schemas. Configuring the Tracing ----------------------- The :ref:`tracing subsystem ` can be configured in several different ways depending on the nature of the simulator (MSG, SimDag, SMPI) and the kind of traces that need to be obtained. See the :ref:`Tracing Configuration Options subsection ` to get a detailed description of each configuration option. We detail here a simple way to get the traces working for you, even if you never used the tracing API. - Any SimGrid-based simulator (MSG, SimDag, SMPI, ...) and raw traces: .. code-block:: shell --cfg=tracing:yes --cfg=tracing/uncategorized:yes --cfg=triva/uncategorized:uncat.plist The first parameter activates the tracing subsystem, the second tells it to trace host and link utilization (without any categorization) and the third creates a graph configuration file to configure Triva when analysing the resulting trace file. - MSG or SimDag-based simulator and categorized traces (you need to declare categories and classify your tasks according to them) .. code-block:: shell --cfg=tracing:yes --cfg=tracing/categorized:yes --cfg=triva/categorized:cat.plist The first parameter activates the tracing subsystem, the second tells it to trace host and link categorized utilization and the third creates a graph configuration file to configure Triva when analysing the resulting trace file. - SMPI simulator and traces for a space/time view: .. code-block:: shell smpirun -trace ... The `-trace` parameter for the smpirun script runs the simulation with ``--cfg=tracing:yes --cfg=tracing/smpi:yes``. Check the smpirun's `-help` parameter for additional tracing options. Sometimes you might want to put additional information on the trace to correctly identify them later, or to provide data that can be used to reproduce an experiment. You have two ways to do that: - Add a string on top of the trace file as comment: .. code-block:: shell --cfg=tracing/comment:my_simulation_identifier - Add the contents of a textual file on top of the trace file as comment: .. code-block:: shell --cfg=tracing/comment-file:my_file_with_additional_information.txt Please, use these two parameters (for comments) to make reproducible simulations. For additional details about this and all tracing options, check See the :ref:`tracing_tracing_options`. Configuring MSG --------------- .. _cfg=msg/debug-multiple-use: Debugging MSG Code .................. **Option** ``msg/debug-multiple-use`` **Default:** off Sometimes your application may try to send a task that is still being executed somewhere else, making it impossible to send this task. However, for debugging purposes, one may want to know what the other host is/was doing. This option shows a backtrace of the other process. Configuring SMPI ---------------- The SMPI interface provides several specific configuration items. These are uneasy to see since the code is usually launched through the ``smiprun`` script directly. .. _cfg=smpi/host-speed: .. _cfg=smpi/cpu-threshold: .. _cfg=smpi/simulate-computation: Automatic Benchmarking of SMPI Code ................................... In SMPI, the sequential code is automatically benchmarked, and these computations are automatically reported to the simulator. That is to say that if you have a large computation between a ``MPI_Recv()`` and a ``MPI_Send()``, SMPI will automatically benchmark the duration of this code, and create an execution task within the simulator to take this into account. For that, the actual duration is measured on the host machine and then scaled to the power of the corresponding simulated machine. The variable ``smpi/host-speed`` allows to specify the computational speed of the host machine (in flop/s) to use when scaling the execution times. It defaults to 20000, but you really want to update it to get accurate simulation results. When the code is constituted of numerous consecutive MPI calls, the previous mechanism feeds the simulation kernel with numerous tiny computations. The ``smpi/cpu-threshold`` item becomes handy when this impacts badly the simulation performance. It specifies a threshold (in seconds) below which the execution chunks are not reported to the simulation kernel (default value: 1e-6). .. note:: The option ``smpi/cpu-threshold`` ignores any computation time spent below this threshold. SMPI does not consider the `amount` of these computations; there is no offset for this. Hence, a value that is too small, may lead to unreliable simulation results. In some cases, however, one may wish to disable simulation of application computation. This is the case when SMPI is used not to simulate an MPI applications, but instead an MPI code that performs "live replay" of another MPI app (e.g., ScalaTrace's replay tool, various on-line simulators that run an app at scale). In this case the computation of the replay/simulation logic should not be simulated by SMPI. Instead, the replay tool or on-line simulator will issue "computation events", which correspond to the actual MPI simulation being replayed/simulated. At the moment, these computation events can be simulated using SMPI by calling internal smpi_execute*() functions. To disable the benchmarking/simulation of computation in the simulated application, the variable ``smpi/simulate-computation`` should be set to no. This option just ignores the timings in your simulation; it still executes the computations itself. If you want to stop SMPI from doing that, you should check the SMPI_SAMPLE macros, documented in Section :ref:`SMPI_adapting_speed`. +------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+ | Solution | Computations executed? | Computations simulated? | +====================================+=========================+=============================+ | --cfg=smpi/simulate-computation:no | Yes | Never | +------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+ | --cfg=smpi/cpu-threshold:42 | Yes, in all cases | If it lasts over 42 seconds | +------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+ | SMPI_SAMPLE() macro | Only once per loop nest | Always | +------------------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+ .. _cfg=smpi/comp-adjustment-file: Slow-down or speed-up parts of your code ........................................ **Option** ``smpi/comp-adjustment-file:`` **Default:** unset This option allows you to pass a file that contains two columns: The first column defines the section that will be subject to a speedup; the second column is the speedup. For instance: .. code-block:: shell "start:stop","ratio" "exchange_1.f:30:exchange_1.f:130",1.18244559422142 The first line is the header - you must include it. The following line means that the code between two consecutive MPI calls on line 30 in exchange_1.f and line 130 in exchange_1.f should receive a speedup of 1.18244559422142. The value for the second column is therefore a speedup, if it is larger than 1 and a slow-down if it is smaller than 1. Nothing will be changed if it is equal to 1. Of course, you can set any arbitrary filenames you want (so the start and end don't have to be in the same file), but be aware that this mechanism only supports `consecutive calls!` Please note that you must pass the ``-trace-call-location`` flag to smpicc or smpiff, respectively. This flag activates some internal macro definitions that help with obtaining the call location. .. _cfg=smpi/bw-factor: Bandwidth Factors ................. **Option** ``smpi/bw-factor`` |br| **Default:** 65472:0.940694;15424:0.697866;9376:0.58729;5776:1.08739;3484:0.77493;1426:0.608902;732:0.341987;257:0.338112;0:0.812084 The possible throughput of network links is often dependent on the message sizes, as protocols may adapt to different message sizes. With this option, a series of message sizes and factors are given, helping the simulation to be more realistic. For instance, the current default value means that messages with size 65472 and more will get a total of MAX_BANDWIDTH*0.940694, messages of size 15424 to 65471 will get MAX_BANDWIDTH*0.697866 and so on (where MAX_BANDWIDTH denotes the bandwidth of the link). An experimental script to compute these factors is available online. See http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-calibration-doc.html http://simgrid.gforge.inria.fr/contrib/smpi-saturation-doc.html .. _cfg=smpi/display-timing: Reporting Simulation Time ......................... **Option** ``smpi/display-timing`` **Default:** 0 (false) Most of the time, you run MPI code with SMPI to compute the time it would take to run it on a platform. But since the code is run through the ``smpirun`` script, you don't have any control on the launcher code, making it difficult to report the simulated time when the simulation ends. If you enable the ``smpi/display-timing`` item, ``smpirun`` will display this information when the simulation ends. .. _cfg=smpi/keep-temps: Keeping temporary files after simulation ........................................ **Option** ``smpi/keep-temps`` **default:** 0 (false) SMPI usually generates a lot of temporary files that are cleaned after use. This option request to preserve them, for example to debug or profile your code. Indeed, the binary files are removed very early under the dlopen privatization schema, which tend to fool the debuggers. .. _cfg=smpi/lat-factor: Latency factors ............... **Option** ``smpi/lat-factor`` |br| **default:** 65472:11.6436;15424:3.48845;9376:2.59299;5776:2.18796;3484:1.88101;1426:1.61075;732:1.9503;257:1.95341;0:2.01467 The motivation and syntax for this option is identical to the motivation/syntax of :ref:`cfg=smpi/bw-factor`. There is an important difference, though: While smpi/bw-factor `reduces` the actual bandwidth (i.e., values between 0 and 1 are valid), latency factors increase the latency, i.e., values larger than or equal to 1 are valid here. .. _cfg=smpi/papi-events: Trace hardware counters with PAPI ................................. **Option** ``smpi/papi-events`` **default:** unset When the PAPI support was compiled in SimGrid, this option takes the names of PAPI counters and adds their respective values to the trace files (See Section :ref:`tracing_tracing_options`). .. warning:: This feature currently requires superuser privileges, as registers are queried. Only use this feature with code you trust! Call smpirun for instance via ``smpirun -wrapper "sudo " `` or run ``sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_paranoid"`` In the later case, sudo will not be required. It is planned to make this feature available on a per-process (or per-thread?) basis. The first draft, however, just implements a "global" (i.e., for all processes) set of counters, the "default" set. .. code-block:: shell --cfg=smpi/papi-events:"default:PAPI_L3_LDM:PAPI_L2_LDM" .. _cfg=smpi/privatization: Automatic Privatization of Global Variables ........................................... **Option** ``smpi/privatization`` **default:** "dlopen" (when using smpirun) MPI executables are usually meant to be executed in separated processes, but SMPI is executed in only one process. Global variables from executables will be placed in the same memory zone and shared between processes, causing intricate bugs. Several options are possible to avoid this, as described in the main `SMPI publication `_ and in the :ref:`SMPI documentation `. SimGrid provides two ways of automatically privatizing the globals, and this option allows to choose between them. - **no** (default when not using smpirun): Do not automatically privatize variables. Pass ``-no-privatize`` to smpirun to disable this feature. - **dlopen** or **yes** (default when using smpirun): Link multiple times against the binary. - **mmap** (slower, but maybe somewhat more stable): Runtime automatic switching of the data segments. .. warning:: This configuration option cannot be set in your platform file. You can only pass it as an argument to smpirun. .. _cfg=smpi/privatize-libs: Automatic privatization of global variables inside external libraries ..................................................................... **Option** ``smpi/privatize-libs`` **default:** unset **Linux/BSD only:** When using dlopen (default) privatization, privatize specific shared libraries with internal global variables, if they can't be linked statically. For example libgfortran is usually used for Fortran I/O and indexes in files can be mixed up. Multiple libraries can be given, semicolon separated. This configuration option can only use either full paths to libraries, or full names. Check with ldd the name of the library you want to use. Example: .. code-block:: shell ldd allpairf90 ... libgfortran.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgfortran.so.3 (0x00007fbb4d91b000) ... Then you can use ``--cfg=smpi/privatize-libs:libgfortran.so.3`` or ``--cfg=smpi/privatize-libs:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgfortran.so.3``, but not ``libgfortran`` nor ``libgfortran.so``. .. _cfg=smpi/send-is-detached-thresh: Simulating MPI detached send ............................ **Option** ``smpi/send-is-detached-thresh`` **default:** 65536 This threshold specifies the size in bytes under which the send will return immediately. This is different from the threshold detailed in :ref:`options_model_network_asyncsend` because the message is not effectively sent when the send is posted. SMPI still waits for the correspondant receive to be posted to perform the communication operation. .. _cfg=smpi/coll-selector: Simulating MPI collective algorithms .................................... **Option** ``smpi/coll-selector`` **Possible values:** naive (default), ompi, mpich SMPI implements more than 100 different algorithms for MPI collective communication, to accurately simulate the behavior of most of the existing MPI libraries. The ``smpi/coll-selector`` item can be used to use the decision logic of either OpenMPI or MPICH libraries (by default SMPI uses naive version of collective operations). Each collective operation can be manually selected with a ``smpi/collective_name:algo_name``. Available algorithms are listed in :ref:`SMPI_use_colls`. .. TODO:: All available collective algorithms will be made available via the ``smpirun --help-coll`` command. .. _cfg=smpi/iprobe: Inject constant times for MPI_Iprobe .................................... **Option** ``smpi/iprobe`` **default:** 0.0001 The behavior and motivation for this configuration option is identical with :ref:`smpi/test `, but for the function ``MPI_Iprobe()`` .. _cfg=smpi/iprobe-cpu-usage: Reduce speed for iprobe calls ............................. **Option** ``smpi/iprobe-cpu-usage`` **default:** 1 (no change) MPI_Iprobe calls can be heavily used in applications. To account correctly for the energy cores spend probing, it is necessary to reduce the load that these calls cause inside SimGrid. For instance, we measured a max power consumption of 220 W for a particular application but only 180 W while this application was probing. Hence, the correct factor that should be passed to this option would be 180/220 = 0.81. .. _cfg=smpi/init: Inject constant times for MPI_Init .................................. **Option** ``smpi/init`` **default:** 0 The behavior and motivation for this configuration option is identical with :ref:`smpi/test `, but for the function ``MPI_Init()``. .. _cfg=smpi/ois: Inject constant times for MPI_Isend() ..................................... **Option** ``smpi/ois`` The behavior and motivation for this configuration option is identical with :ref:`smpi/os `, but for the function ``MPI_Isend()``. .. _cfg=smpi/os: Inject constant times for MPI_send() .................................... **Option** ``smpi/os`` In several network models such as LogP, send (MPI_Send, MPI_Isend) and receive (MPI_Recv) operations incur costs (i.e., they consume CPU time). SMPI can factor these costs in as well, but the user has to configure SMPI accordingly as these values may vary by machine. This can be done by using ``smpi/os`` for MPI_Send operations; for MPI_Isend and MPI_Recv, use ``smpi/ois`` and ``smpi/or``, respectively. These work exactly as ``smpi/ois``. This item can consist of multiple sections; each section takes three values, for example ``1:3:2;10:5:1``. The sections are divided by ";" so this example contains two sections. Furthermore, each section consists of three values. 1. The first value denotes the minimum size for this section to take effect; read it as "if message size is greater than this value (and other section has a larger first value that is also smaller than the message size), use this". In the first section above, this value is "1". 2. The second value is the startup time; this is a constant value that will always be charged, no matter what the size of the message. In the first section above, this value is "3". 3. The third value is the `per-byte` cost. That is, it is charged for every byte of the message (incurring cost messageSize*cost_per_byte) and hence accounts also for larger messages. In the first section of the example above, this value is "2". Now, SMPI always checks which section it should take for a given message; that is, if a message of size 11 is sent with the configuration of the example above, only the second section will be used, not the first, as the first value of the second section is closer to the message size. Hence, when ``smpi/os=1:3:2;10:5:1``, a message of size 11 incurs the following cost inside MPI_Send: ``5+11*1`` because 5 is the startup cost and 1 is the cost per byte. Note that the order of sections can be arbitrary; they will be ordered internally. .. _cfg=smpi/or: Inject constant times for MPI_Recv() .................................... **Option** ``smpi/or`` The behavior and motivation for this configuration option is identical with :ref:`smpi/os `, but for the function ``MPI_Recv()``. .. _cfg=smpi/test: .. _cfg=smpi/grow-injected-times: Inject constant times for MPI_Test .................................. **Option** ``smpi/test`` **default:** 0.0001 By setting this option, you can control the amount of time a process sleeps when MPI_Test() is called; this is important, because SimGrid normally only advances the time while communication is happening and thus, MPI_Test will not add to the time, resulting in a deadlock if used as a break-condition as in the following example: .. code-block:: cpp while(!flag) { MPI_Test(request, flag, status); ... } To speed up execution, we use a counter to keep track on how often we already checked if the handle is now valid or not. Hence, we actually use counter*SLEEP_TIME, that is, the time MPI_Test() causes the process to sleep increases linearly with the number of previously failed tests. This behavior can be disabled by setting ``smpi/grow-injected-times`` to **no**. This will also disable this behavior for MPI_Iprobe. .. _cfg=smpi/shared-malloc: .. _cfg=smpi/shared-malloc-hugepage: Factorize malloc()s ................... **Option** ``smpi/shared-malloc`` **Possible values:** global (default), local If your simulation consumes too much memory, you may want to modify your code so that the working areas are shared by all MPI ranks. For example, in a bloc-cyclic matrix multiplication, you will only allocate one set of blocs, and every processes will share them. Naturally, this will lead to very wrong results, but this will save a lot of memory so this is still desirable for some studies. For more on the motivation for that feature, please refer to the `relevant section `_ of the SMPI CourseWare (see Activity #2.2 of the pointed assignment). In practice, change the call to malloc() and free() into SMPI_SHARED_MALLOC() and SMPI_SHARED_FREE(). SMPI provides two algorithms for this feature. The first one, called ``local``, allocates one bloc per call to SMPI_SHARED_MALLOC() in your code (each call location gets its own bloc) and this bloc is shared amongst all MPI ranks. This is implemented with the shm_* functions to create a new POSIX shared memory object (kept in RAM, in /dev/shm) for each shared bloc. With the ``global`` algorithm, each call to SMPI_SHARED_MALLOC() returns a new adress, but it only points to a shadow bloc: its memory area is mapped on a 1MiB file on disk. If the returned bloc is of size N MiB, then the same file is mapped N times to cover the whole bloc. At the end, no matter how many SMPI_SHARED_MALLOC you do, this will only consume 1 MiB in memory. You can disable this behavior and come back to regular mallocs (for example for debugging purposes) using @c "no" as a value. If you want to keep private some parts of the buffer, for instance if these parts are used by the application logic and should not be corrupted, you can use SMPI_PARTIAL_SHARED_MALLOC(size, offsets, offsets_count). Example: .. code-block:: cpp mem = SMPI_PARTIAL_SHARED_MALLOC(500, {27,42 , 100,200}, 2); This will allocate 500 bytes to mem, such that mem[27..41] and mem[100..199] are shared while other area remain private. Then, it can be deallocated by calling SMPI_SHARED_FREE(mem). When smpi/shared-malloc:global is used, the memory consumption problem is solved, but it may induce too much load on the kernel's pages table. In this case, you should use huge pages so that we create only one entry per Mb of malloced data instead of one entry per 4k. To activate this, you must mount a hugetlbfs on your system and allocate at least one huge page: .. code-block:: shell mkdir /home/huge sudo mount none /home/huge -t hugetlbfs -o rw,mode=0777 sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/nr_hugepages' # echo more if you need more Then, you can pass the option ``--cfg=smpi/shared-malloc-hugepage:/home/huge`` to smpirun to actually activate the huge page support in shared mallocs. .. _cfg=smpi/wtime: Inject constant times for MPI_Wtime, gettimeofday and clock_gettime ................................................................... **Option** ``smpi/wtime`` **default:** 10 ns This option controls the amount of (simulated) time spent in calls to MPI_Wtime(), gettimeofday() and clock_gettime(). If you set this value to 0, the simulated clock is not advanced in these calls, which leads to issue if your application contains such a loop: .. code-block:: cpp while(MPI_Wtime() < some_time_bound) { /* some tests, with no communication nor computation */ } When the option smpi/wtime is set to 0, the time advances only on communications and computations, so the previous code results in an infinite loop: the current [simulated] time will never reach ``some_time_bound``. This infinite loop is avoided when that option is set to a small amount, as it is by default since SimGrid v3.21. Note that if your application does not contain any loop depending on the current time only, then setting this option to a non-zero value will slow down your simulations by a tiny bit: the simulation loop has to be broken and reset each time your code ask for the current time. If the simulation speed really matters to you, you can avoid this extra delay by setting smpi/wtime to 0. Other Configurations -------------------- .. _cfg=clean-atexit: Cleanup at Termination ...................... **Option** ``clean-atexit`` **default:** on If your code is segfaulting during its finalization, it may help to disable this option to request SimGrid to not attempt any cleanups at the end of the simulation. Since the Unix process is ending anyway, the operating system will wipe it all. .. _cfg=path: Search Path ........... **Option** ``path`` **default:** . (current dir) It is possible to specify a list of directories to search into for the trace files (see :ref:`pf_trace`) by using this configuration item. To add several directory to the path, set the configuration item several times, as in ``--cfg=path:toto --cfg=path:tutu`` .. _cfg=simix/breakpoint: Set a Breakpoint ................ **Option** ``simix/breakpoint`` **default:** unset This configuration option sets a breakpoint: when the simulated clock reaches the given time, a SIGTRAP is raised. This can be used to stop the execution and get a backtrace with a debugger. It is also possible to set the breakpoint from inside the debugger, by writing in global variable simgrid::simix::breakpoint. For example, with gdb: .. code-block:: shell set variable simgrid::simix::breakpoint = 3.1416 .. _cfg=verbose-exit: Behavior on Ctrl-C .................. **Option** ``verbose-exit`` **default:** on By default, when Ctrl-C is pressed, the status of all existing actors is displayed before exiting the simulation. This is very useful to debug your code, but it can reveal troublesome if you have many actors. Set this configuration item to **off** to disable this feature. .. _cfg=exception/cutpath: Truncate local path from exception backtrace ............................................ **Option** ``exception/cutpath`` **default:** off This configuration option is used to remove the path from the backtrace shown when an exception is thrown. This is mainly useful for the tests: the full file path makes the tests not reproducible because the path of source files depend of the build settings. That would break most of our tests as we keep comparing output. Logging Configuration --------------------- It can be done by using XBT. Go to :ref:`XBT_log` for more details. .. |br| raw:: html