instructions and still have some troubles, drop an e-mail to
<simgrid-user@lists.gforge.inria.fr>.
-\subsection faq_compiling Compiling SimGrid
+\subsection faq_compiling Compiling SimGrid from an archive
+First of all, you need to download the latest version of SimGrid from
+<a href="http://gforge.inria.fr/frs/?group_id=12">here</a>.
Suppose you have uncompressed SimGrid in some temporary location of
your home directory (say <tt>/home/joe/tmp/simgrid-3.0.1 </tt>). The
simplest way to use SimGrid is to install it in your home
make install
\endverbatim
-If at some point, something fails, you can report me this problem but,
-please, avoid sending a laconic mail like "There is a problem. Is it
-normal?". Send me the config.log file which is automatically
-generated by configure. Try to capture both the standard output and
-the error output of the <tt>make</tt> command. There is no way for me
-to help you if you do not give me a little bit of information.
+If at some point, something fails, check the section "\ref
+faq_compil_trouble". If it does not help, you can report this problem to the
+list but, please, avoid sending a laconic mail like "There is a problem. Is it
+okay?". Send the config.log file which is automatically generated by
+configure. Try to capture both the standard output and the error output of the
+<tt>make</tt> command with <tt>script</tt>. There is no way for us to help you
+without the relevant bits of information.
Now, the following directory should have been created :
\verbatim export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib/:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
\endverbatim
-\subsection faq_setting Setting up your own code
+
+\subsection faq_compiling_cvs Compiling SimGrid from the CVS
+
+The project development takes place in the cvs, where all changes are
+commited when they happen. Then every once in a while, we make sure that the
+code quality meets our standard and release an archive from the code in the
+CVS. We afterward go back to the development in the CVS. So, if you need a
+recently added feature and can afford some little problem with the stability
+of the lastest features, you may want to use the CVS version instead of a
+released one.
+
+For that, you first need to get the "simgrid" module from
+<a href="http://gforge.inria.fr/scm/?group_id=12">here</a>.
+
+You won't find any <tt>configure</tt> and a few other things
+(<tt>Makefile.in</tt>'s, documentation, ...) will be missing as well. The
+reason for that is that all these files have to be regenerated using the
+latest versions of <tt>autoconf</tt>, <tt>libtool</tt>, <tt>automake</tt>
+(>1.9) and <tt>doxygen</tt> (>1.4). To generate the <tt>configure</tt> and
+the <tt>Makefile.in</tt>'s, you just have to launch the <tt>bootstrap</tt>
+command that resides in the top of the source tree. Then just follow the
+instructions of Section \ref faq_compiling.
+
+We insist on the fact that you really need the latest versions of
+autoconf and automake. Doing this step on exotic architectures/systems
+(i.e. anything different from a recent linux distribution) may be
+... uncertain. If you want to use the CVS version on another
+architecture/system, you should do the previous steps on a perfectly
+standard box, then do a <tt>make dist</tt> that will build you a
+perfectly portable SimGrid archive.
+
+In summary, the following commands will checkout the CVS, regenerate the
+configure script and friends, configure SimGrid and build an archive you can
+use on another machine afterward.
+
+\verbatim cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@scm.gforge.inria.fr:/cvsroot/simgrid login
+cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@scm.gforge.inria.fr:/cvsroot/simgrid checkout simgrid
+cd simgrid
+./bootstrap
+./configure --enable-maintainer-mode
+make dist \endverbatim
+
+Moreover, you should never call the autotools manually since you must run
+them in a specific order with specific arguments. Most of the times, the
+makefiles will automatically call the tools for you. When it's not possible
+(such as the first time you checkout the CVS), use the ./bootstrap command
+to call them explicitely.
+
+If you need to compile the CVS version on a machine where all these
+dependencies are not met, the easiest is to do <tt>make dist</tt> in the CVS
+dir, on another machine where all dependencies are met. It will create an
+archive you may deploy on other sites just as a regular stable release.
+
+\subsection faq_setting_MSG Setting up your own MSG code
Do not build your simulator by modifying the SimGrid examples. Go
outside the SimGrid source tree and create your own working directory
previous example should be enough for a first try but you may want to
perform some more complex compilations...
+\subsection faq_setting_GRAS Setting up your own GRAS code
+
+If you use the GRAS interface instead of the MSG one, then previous section
+is not the better source of information. Instead, you should check the GRAS
+tutorial in general, and the \ref GRAS_tut_tour_setup in particular.
+
+\subsection faq_crosscompile Cross-compiling a Windows DLL of SimGrid from linux
+
+At the moment, we do not distribute Windows pre-compiled version of SimGrid
+because the support for this platform is still experimental. We know that
+some parts of the GRAS environment do not work, and we think that the others
+environments (MSG and SD) have good chances to work, but we didn't test
+ourselves. This section explains how we generate the SimGrid DLL so that you
+can build it for yourself. First of all, you need to have a version more
+recent than 3.1 (ie, a CVS version as time of writting).
+
+In order to cross-compile the package to windows from linux, you need to
+install mingw32 (minimalist gnu win32). On Debian, you can do so by
+installing the packages mingw32 (compiler), mingw32-binutils (linker and
+so), mingw32-runtime.
+
+You can use the VPATH support of configure to compile at the same time for
+linux and windows without dupplicating the source nor cleaning the tree
+between each. Just run bootstrap (if you use the CVS) to run the autotools.
+Then, create a linux and a win directories. Then, type:
+\verbatim cd linux; ../configure --srcdir=.. <usual configure flags>; make; cd ..
+cd win; ../configure --srcdir=.. --host=i586-mingw32msvc <flags>; make; cd ..
+\endverbatim
+The trick to VPATH builds is to call configure from another directory,
+passing it an extra --srcdir argument to tell it where all the sources are.
+It will understand you want to use VPATH. Then, the trick to cross-compile
+is simply to add a --host argument specifying the target you want to build
+for. The i586-mingw32msvc string is what you have to pass to use the mingw32
+environment as distributed in Debian.
+
+After that, you can run all make targets from both directories, and test
+easily that what you change for one arch does not break the other one.
+
+It is possible that this VPATH build thing breaks from time to time in the
+CVS since it's quite fragile, but it's granted to work in any released
+version. If you experience problems, drop us a mail.
+
+Another possible source of issue is that at the moment, building the
+examples request to use the gras_stub_generator tool, which is a compiled
+program, not a script. In cross-compilation, you need to cross-execute with
+wine for example, which is not really pleasant. We are working on this, but
+in the meanwhile, simply don't build the examples in cross-compilation
+(<tt>cd src</tt> before running make).
+
+Program (cross-)compiled with mingw32 do request an extra DLL at run-time to be
+usable. For example, if you want to test your build with wine, you should do
+the following to put this library where wine looks for DLLs.
+\verbatim
+cp /usr/share/doc/mingw32-runtime/mingwm10.dll.gz ~/.wine/c/windows/system/
+gunzip ~/.wine/c/windows/system/mingwm10.dll.gz
+\endverbatim
+
+The DLL is builded in src/.libs, and installed in the <i>prefix</i>/bin directory
+when you run make install.
+
+If you want to use it in a native project on windows, you need to use
+simgrid.dll and mingwm10.dll. For each DLL, you need to build .def file
+under linux (listing the defined symbols), and convert it into a .lib file
+under windows (specifying this in a way that windows compilers like). To
+generate the def files, run (under linux):
+\verbatim echo "LIBRARY libsimgrid-0.dll" > simgrid.def
+echo EXPORTS >> simgrid.def
+nm libsimgrid-0.dll | grep ' T _' | sed 's/.* T _//' >> simgrid.def
+nm libsimgrid-0.dll | grep ' D _' | sed 's/.* D _//' | sed 's/$/ DATA/' >> simgrid.def
+
+echo "LIBRARY mingwm10.dll" > mingwm10.def
+echo EXPORTS >> mingwm10.def
+nm mingwm10.dll | grep ' T _' | sed 's/.* T _//' >> mingwm10.def
+nm mingwm10.dll | grep ' D _' | sed 's/.* D _//' | sed 's/$/ DATA/' >> mingwm10.def
+\endverbatim
+
+To create the import .lib files, use the <tt>lib</tt> windows tool (from
+MSVC) the following way to produce simgrid.lib and mingwm10.lib
+\verbatim lib /def:simgrid.def
+lib /def:mingwm10.def
+\endverbatim
+
+If you happen to use Borland C Builder, the right command line is the
+following (note that you don't need any file.def to get this working).
+\verbatim implib simgrid.lib libsimgrid-0.dll
+implib mingwm10.lib mingwm10.dll
+\endverbatim
+
+Then, set the following parameters in Visual C++ 2005:
+Linker -> Input -> Additional dependencies = simgrid.lib mingwm10.lib
+
+Just in case you wonder how to generate a DLL from libtool in another
+project, we added -no-undefined to any lib*_la_LDFLAGS variables so that
+libtool accepts to generate a dynamic library under windows. Then, to make
+it true, we pass any dependencies (such as -lws2 under windows or -lpthread
+on need) on the linking line. Passing such deps is a good idea anyway so
+that they get noted in the library itself, avoiding the users to know about
+our dependencies and put them manually on their compilation line. Then we
+added the AC_LIBTOOL_WIN32_DLL macro just before AC_PROG_LIBTOOL in the
+configure.ac. It means that we exported any symbols which need to be.
+Nowadays, functions get automatically exported, so we don't need to load our
+header files with tons of __declspec(dllexport) cruft. We only need to do so
+for data, but there is no public data in SimGrid so we are good.
+
\section faq_simgrid I'm new to SimGrid. I have some questions. Where should I start?
You are at the right place... Having a look to these
-<a href="http://graal.ens-lyon.fr/~alegrand/articles/Simgrid-Introduction.pdf">slides</a>
+<a href="http://graal.ens-lyon.fr/~alegrand/articles/slides_g5k_simul.pdf">slides</a>
+(or to these
+<a href="http://graal.ens-lyon.fr/~alegrand/articles/Simgrid-Introduction.pdf">"obsolete" slides</a>)
may give you some insights on what SimGrid can help you to do and what
are its limitations. Then you definitely should read the \ref
MSG_examples. There is also a mailing list: <simgrid-user@lists.gforge.inria.fr>.
As usual, you're welcome to participate.
-\section faq_questions How to ....? Is there a function in the API to simply ....?
+\section faq_MIA How to ....? Is there a function in the API to simply ....?
Here is the deal. The whole SimGrid project (MSG, SURF, GRAS, ...) is
meant to be kept as simple and generic as possible. We cannot add
people have asked about it and we have given hints on how to simply do
it with MSG. Feel free to contribute...
-\subsection faq_examples I want some more complex examples!
+\subsection faq_MIA_examples I want some more complex examples!
Many people have come to ask me a more complex example and each time,
they have realized afterward that the basics were in the previous three
us if something is not clear and once again feel free to participate!
:)
-\subsection faq_examples_MIA_taskdup Missing in action: Task duplication/replication
+\subsection faq_MIA_taskdup Missing in action: Task duplication/replication
There is no task duplication in MSG. When you create a task, you can
process it or send it somewhere else. As soon as a process has sent
MSG_task_get_remaining_computation(), MSG_task_get_data_size(),
and MSG_task_get_data().
-You could use a dictionnary (#xbt_dict_t) of dynars (#xbt_dict_t). If
+You could use a dictionnary (#xbt_dict_t) of dynars (#xbt_dynar_t). If
you still don't see how to do it, please come back to us...
-\subsection faq_examples_MIA_asynchronous I want to do asynchronous communications.
+\subsection faq_MIA_asynchronous I want to do asynchronous communications in MSG
Up until now, there is no asynchronous communications in MSG. However,
you can create as many process as you want so you should be able to do
process only to handle communications may be problematic in term of
performance at some point). I'll add it in the distribution asap.
-\subsection faq_examples_MIA_thread_synchronization I need to synchronize my process
+\subsection faq_MIA_thread_synchronization I need to synchronize my MSG processes
You obviously cannot use pthread_mutexes of pthread_conds. The best
thing would be to propose similar structures. Unfortunately, we
synchronization with fake communications (using MSG_task_get(),
MSG_task_put() and MSG_task_Iprobe()).
-\subsection faq_examples_MIA_host_load Where is the get_host_load function hidden in MSG?
+\subsection faq_MIA_host_load Where is the get_host_load function hidden in MSG?
There is no such thing because its semantic wouldn't be really
clear. Of course, it is something about the amount of host throughput,
case, please detail what you mean on the mailing list, and we will extend
this FAQ section to fit your taste if possible.
-\subsection faq_examples_MIA_batch_scheduler Is there a native support for batch schedulers in SimGrid ?
+\subsection faq_MIA_communication_time How can I get the *real* communication time ?
+
+Communications are synchronous and thus if you simply get the time
+before and after a communication, you'll only get the transmission
+time and the time spent to really communicate (it will also take into
+account the time spent waiting for the other party to be
+ready). However, getting the *real* communication time is not really
+hard either. The following solution is a good starting point.
+
+\verbatim
+int sender()
+{
+ m_task_t task = MSG_task_create("Task", task_comp_size, task_comm_size,
+ calloc(1,sizeof(double)));
+ *((double*) task->data) = MSG_get_clock();
+ MSG_task_put(task, slaves[i % slaves_count], PORT_22);
+ INFO0("Send completed");
+ return 0;
+}
+int receiver()
+{
+ m_task_t task = NULL;
+ double time1,time2;
+
+ time1 = MSG_get_clock();
+ a = MSG_task_get(&(task), PORT_22);
+ time2 = MSG_get_clock();
+ if(time1<*((double *)task->data))
+ time1 = *((double *) task->data);
+ INFO1("Communication time : \"%f\" ", time2-time1);
+ free(task->data);
+ MSG_task_destroy(task);
+ return 0;
+}
+\endverbatim
+
+\subsection faq_MIA_batch_scheduler Is there a native support for batch schedulers in SimGrid ?
No, there is no native support for batch schedulers and none is
planned because this is a very specific need (and doing it in a
and put his code in the contrib directory of our CVS so that other can
keep working on it. You may find inspinring ideas in it.
+\subsection faq_MIA_checkpointing I need a checkpointing thing
+
+Actually, it depends on whether you want to checkpoint the simulation, or to
+simulate checkpoints.
+
+The first one could help if your simulation is a long standing process you
+want to keep running even on hardware issues. It could also help to
+<i>rewind</i> the simulation by jumping sometimes on an old checkpoint to
+cancel recent calculations.\n
+Unfortunately, such thing will probably never exist in SG. One would have to
+duplicate all data structures because doing a rewind at the simulator level
+is very very hard (not talking about the malloc free operations that might
+have been done in between). Instead, you may be interested in the Libckpt
+library (http://www.cs.utk.edu/~plank/plank/www/libckpt.html). This is the
+checkpointing solution used in the condor project, for example. It makes it
+easy to create checkpoints (at the OS level, creating something like core
+files), and rerunning them on need.
+
+If you want to simulate checkpoints instead, it means that you want the
+state of an executing task (in particular, the progress made towards
+completion) to be saved somewhere. So if a host (and the task executing on
+it) fails (cf. #MSG_HOST_FAILURE), then the task can be restarted
+from the last checkpoint.\n
+
+Actually, such a thing does not exists in SimGrid either, but it's just
+because we don't think it is fundamental and it may be done in the user code
+at relatively low cost. You could for example use a watcher that
+periodically get the remaining amount of things to do (using
+MSG_task_get_remaining_computation()), or fragment the task in smaller
+subtasks.
+
\section faq_SG Where has SG disappeared?!?
OK, it's time to explain what's happening to the SimGrid project. Let's
Those two things are working, but we want to make everything as clean as
possible before releasing SimGrid v.3.
-So what about those nice DAGs we used to have in SimGrid v.1.? They're not
-anymore in SimGrid v.3. Let me recall you the way SimGrid 3 is organized:
+So what about those nice DAGs we used to have in SimGrid v.1.? They're
+not anymore in SimGrid v.3. At least not in their original form... Let
+me recall you the way SimGrid 3 is organized:
\verbatim
________________
----------------
\endverbatim
-XBT is our tool box and now, you should have an idea of what the other ones
-are. As you can see, the primitive SG is not here anymore. However it could
-still be brought back if people really need it. Here is how it would fit.
+XBT is our tool box and now, you should have an idea of what the other
+ones are. As you can see, the primitive SG is not here
+anymore. However we have written a brand new and cleaner API for this
+purpose: \ref SD_API. It is built directly on top of SURF and provides
+an API rather close to the old SG:
\verbatim
______________________
| User code |
|____________________|
-| | MSG | GRAS | SG |
+| | MSG | GRAS | SD |
| -------------------|
| | SURF |
| -------------------|
----------------------
\endverbatim
-Re-implementing SG on top of SURF is really straightforward (it only
-requires a little bit of time that I really don't have right now)
-since the only thing that lacks to SURF is the DAG part. But adding it
-to SURF would slow it down and therefore slow MSG and GRAS which is
-not a good thing. However it is really not on the top of our TODO
-list because we have to work on GRAS, and its MPI counterpart, and a
-parallel task model, and ... Anyway, we finally have migrated our CVS
-to gforge so people that are interested by helping on this part will
-have the possibility to do it.
+The nice thing is that, as it is writen on top of SURF, it seamlessly
+support DAG of parallel tasks as well as complex communications
+patterns. Some old codes using SG are currently under rewrite using
+\ref SD_API to check that all needful functions are provided.
\subsection faq_SG_DAG How to implement a distributed dynamic scheduler of DAGs.
Distributed is somehow "contagious". If you start making distributed
-decisions, there is no way to handle DAGs directly anymore (unless I am
-missing something). You have to encode your DAGs in term of communicating
-process to make the whole scheduling process distributed. Believe me, it is
-worth the effort since you'll then be able to try your algorithms in a very
-wide variety of conditions. Here is an example of how you could do that.
-Assume T1 has to be done before T2.
+decisions, there is no way to handle DAGs directly anymore (unless I
+am missing something). You have to encode your DAGs in term of
+communicating process to make the whole scheduling process
+distributed. Here is an example of how you could do that. Assume T1
+has to be done before T2.
\verbatim
int your_agent(int argc, char *argv[] {
\endverbatim
If you decide that the distributed part is not that much important and that
-DAG is really the level of abstraction you want to work with (but it
-prevents you from having "realistic" platform modeling), then you should
-keep using the 2.18.5 versions until somebody has ported SG on top of SURF.
-Note however that SURF will be slower than the old SG to handle traces with
-a lots of variations (there is no trace integration anymore).
-
-\subsection faq_SG_future Will SG come back in the maintained branch one day?
-
-Sure. In fact, we already have thought about a new and cleaner API:
-\verbatim
-void* SG_link_get_data(SG_link_t link);
-void SG_link_set_data(SG_link_t link, void *data);
-const char* SG_link_get_name(SG_link_t link);
-double SG_link_get_capacity(SG_link_t link);
-double SG_link_get_current_bandwidth(SG_link_t link);
-double SG_link_get_current_latency(SG_link_t link);
-
-SG_workstation_t SG_workstation_get_by_name(const char *name);
-SG_workstation_t* SG_workstation_get_list(void);
-int SG_workstation_get_number(void);
-void SG_workstation_set_data(SG_workstation_t workstation, void *data);
-void * SG_workstation_get_data(SG_workstation_t workstation);
-const char* SG_workstation_get_name(SG_workstation_t workstation);
-SG_link_t* SG_workstation_route_get_list(SG_workstation_t src, SG_workstation_t dst);
-int SG_workstation_route_get_size(SG_workstation_t src, SG_workstation_t dst);
-double SG_workstation_get_power(SG_workstation_t workstation);
-double SG_workstation_get_available_power(SG_workstation_t workstation);
-
-SG_task_t SG_task_create(const char *name, void *data, double amount);
-int SG_task_schedule(SG_task_t task, int workstation_nb,
- SG_workstation_t **workstation_list, double *computation_amount,
- double *communication_amount, double rate);
-
-void* SG_task_get_data(SG_task_t task);
-void SG_task_set_data(SG_task_t task, void *data);
-const char* SG_task_get_name(SG_task_t task);
-double SG_task_get_amount(SG_task_t task);
-double SG_task_get_remaining_amount(SG_task_t task);
-void SG_task_dependency_add(const char *name, void *data, SG_task_t src, SG_task_t dst);
-void SG_task_dependency_remove(SG_task_t src, SG_task_t dst);
-e_SG_task_state_t SG_task_state_get(SG_task_t task); /* e_SG_task_state_t can be either SG_SCHEDULED, SG_RUNNING, SG_DONE, or SG_FAILED */
-void SG_task_watch(SG_task_t task, e_SG_task_state_t state); /* SG_simulate will stop as soon as the state of this task is the one given in argument.
- Watch-point is then automatically removed */
-void SG_task_unwatch(SG_task_t task, e_SG_task_state_t state);
-
-void SG_task_unschedule(SG_task_t task); /* change state and rerun.. */
-
-SG_task_t *SG_simulate(double how_long); /* returns a NULL-terminated array of SG_task_t whose state has changed */
-\endverbatim
-
-We're just looking for somebody to implement it... :)
+DAG is really the level of abstraction you want to work with, then you should
+give a try to \ref SD_API.
\section faq_dynamic Dynamic resources and platform building
An example of this trick is distributed in the file examples/msg/msg_test_surfxml_bypassed.c
-\section faq_troubleshooting Troubleshooting
-
-\subsection faq_distcheck_fails Dude! "make check" fails on my machine!
-
-Don't assume we never run this target, because we do. Really. Promise!
-
-There is several reasons which may cause the make check to fail on your
-machine:
-
- - <b>You are using a borken compiler</b>.\n
- The symptom may be that the "make check" fails within testsuite/gras
- directory.\n
- For example, the breezy release of Ubuntu comes with a prerelease of the
- 4.0 gcc compiler. This version happens to be completely unusable, and you
- should install a gcc-3.4 compiler and change the /usr/bin/gcc link to let
- it point on /usr/bin/gcc-3.4.
- - <b>You are using a borken build environment</b>\n
- If symptom is that configure complains about gcc not being able to build
- executables, you are probably missing the libc6-dev package. Damn Ubuntu.
- - <b>You are using a borken libc (probably concerning the contextes)</b>.\n
- The symptom is that the "make check" fails within the examples/msg directory.\n
- By default, SimGrid uses something called ucontexts. This is part of the
- libc, but it's quite undertested. For example, some (old) versions of the
- glibc on alpha do not implement these functions, but provide the stubs
- (which return ENOSYS: not implemented). It fools our detection mecanism
- and leads to segfaults.\n
- On some x86_64, the pointer to function is stored into a integer, but int
- are 32bits only on this arch while pointers are 64bits. Our detection
- mecanism also fails to detect the problem, which leads to segfaults.\n
- In both cases, there is not much we can do to fix the bug. We are working
- on a workaround for x86_64 machines, but in the meanwhile, you can
- compile with --with-context=pthread to avoid ucontext completely. You'll
- be a bit more limitated in the number of simulated processes you can start
- concurently, but 5000 processes is still enough for most purposes, isn't
- it?\n
- This limitation is the reason why we insist on using this piece of ...
- software even if it's so troublesome.
- - <b>There is a bug in SimGrid we aren't aware of</b>.\n
- If none of the above apply, please drop us a mail on the mailing list so
- that we can check it out.
+\section faq_limits Pushing the limits
\subsection faq_context_1000 I want thousands of simulated processes
- It was really boring to write 25,000 entries in the deployment file, so I wrote
a little script <tt>examples/gras/tokenS/make_deployment.pl</tt>, which you may
- want to adapt to your case.
+ want to adapt to your case. You could also think about hijacking
+ the SURFXML parser (have look at \ref faq_flexml_bypassing).
- The deployment file became quite big, so I had to do what is in the FAQ
entry \ref faq_flexml_limit
low, you'll get a segfault. The token ring example, which is quite simple,
runs with 40kb stacks.
+\section faq_troubleshooting Troubleshooting
+
+\subsection faq_compil_trouble ./configure fails!
+
+We now only one reason for the configure to fail:
+
+ - <b>You are using a borken build environment</b>\n
+ If symptom is that configure complains about gcc not being able to build
+ executables, you are probably missing the libc6-dev package. Damn Ubuntu.
+
+If you experience other kind of issue, please get in touch with us. We are
+always interested in improving our portability to new systems.
+
+\subsection faq_distcheck_fails Dude! "make check" fails on my machine!
+
+Don't assume we never run this target, because we do. Really. Promise!
+
+There is several reasons which may cause the make check to fail on your
+machine:
+
+ - <b>You are using a borken libc (probably concerning the contextes)</b>.\n
+ The symptom is that the "make check" fails within the examples/msg directory.\n
+ By default, SimGrid uses something called ucontexts. This is part of the
+ libc, but it's quite undertested. For example, some (old) versions of the
+ glibc on alpha do not implement these functions, but provide the stubs
+ (which return ENOSYS: not implemented). It fools our detection mecanism
+ and leads to segfaults.\n
+ On some x86_64, the pointer to function is stored into a integer, but int
+ are 32bits only on this arch while pointers are 64bits. Our detection
+ mecanism also fails to detect the problem, which leads to segfaults.\n
+ In both cases, there is not much we can do to fix the bug. We are working
+ on a workaround for x86_64 machines, but in the meanwhile, you can
+ compile with --with-context=pthread to avoid ucontext completely. You'll
+ be a bit more limitated in the number of simulated processes you can start
+ concurently, but 5000 processes is still enough for most purposes, isn't
+ it?\n
+ This limitation is the reason why we insist on using this piece of ...
+ software even if it's so troublesome.\n
+ <b>=> use --with-pthread on AMD64 architecture that do not have an
+ ultra-recent libc.</b>
+
+ - <b>There is a bug in SimGrid we aren't aware of</b>.\n
+ If none of the above apply, please drop us a mail on the mailing list so
+ that we can check it out.
+
+\subsection faq_longjmp longjmp madness in valgrind
+
+This is when valgrind starts complaining about longjmp things, just like:
+
+\verbatim ==21434== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s)
+==21434== at 0x420DBE5: longjmp (longjmp.c:33)
+==21434==
+==21434== Use of uninitialised value of size 4
+==21434== at 0x420DC3A: __longjmp (__longjmp.S:48)
+\endverbatim
+
+or even when it reports scary things like:
+
+\verbatim ==24023== Warning: client switching stacks? SP change: 0xBE3FF618 --> 0xBE7FF710
+x86->IR: unhandled instruction bytes: 0xF4 0xC7 0x83 0xD0
+==24023== to suppress, use: --max-stackframe=4194552 or greater
+==24023== Your program just tried to execute an instruction that Valgrind
+==24023== did not recognise. There are two possible reasons for this.
+==24023== 1. Your program has a bug and erroneously jumped to a non-code
+==24023== location. If you are running Memcheck and you just saw a
+==24023== warning about a bad jump, it's probably your program's fault.
+==24023== 2. The instruction is legitimate but Valgrind doesn't handle it,
+==24023== i.e. it's Valgrind's fault. If you think this is the case or
+==24023== you are not sure, please let us know.
+==24023== Either way, Valgrind will now raise a SIGILL signal which will
+==24023== probably kill your program.
+==24023==
+==24023== Process terminating with default action of signal 4 (SIGILL)
+==24023== Illegal opcode at address 0x420D234
+==24023== at 0x420D234: abort (abort.c:124)
+\endverbatim
+
+This is the sign that you didn't used the exception mecanism well. Most
+probably, you have a <tt>return;</tt> somewhere within a <tt>TRY{}</tt>
+block. This is <b>evil</b>, and you must not do this. Did you read the section
+about \ref XBT_ex??
+
+\subsection faq_valgrind Valgrind spits tons of errors!
+
+It may happen that valgrind, the memory debugger beloved by any decent C
+programmer, spits tons of warnings like the following :
+\verbatim ==8414== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s)
+==8414== at 0x400882D: (within /lib/ld-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x414EDE9: (within /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x400B105: (within /lib/ld-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x414F937: _dl_open (in /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x4150F4C: (within /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x400B105: (within /lib/ld-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x415102D: __libc_dlopen_mode (in /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x412D6B9: backtrace (in /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.3.6.so)
+==8414== by 0x8076446: xbt_dictelm_get_ext (dict_elm.c:714)
+==8414== by 0x80764C1: xbt_dictelm_get (dict_elm.c:732)
+==8414== by 0x8079010: xbt_cfg_register (config.c:208)
+==8414== by 0x806821B: MSG_config (msg_config.c:42)
+\endverbatim
+
+This problem is somewhere in the libc when using the backtraces and there is
+very few things we can do ourselves to fix it. Instead, here is how to tell
+valgrind to ignore the error. Add the following to your ~/.valgrind.supp (or
+create this file on need). Make sure to change the obj line according to
+your personnal mileage (change 2.3.6 to the actual version you are using,
+which you can retrieve with a simple "ls /lib/ld*.so").
+
+\verbatim {
+ name: Backtrace madness
+ Memcheck:Cond
+ obj:/lib/ld-2.3.6.so
+ fun:dl_open_worker
+ fun:_dl_open
+ fun:do_dlopen
+ fun:dlerror_run
+ fun:__libc_dlopen_mode
+}\endverbatim
+
+Then, you have to specify valgrind to use this suppression file by passing
+the <tt>--suppressions=$HOME/.valgrind.supp</tt> option on the command line.
+You can also add the following to your ~/.bashrc so that it gets passed
+automatically. Actually, it passes a bit more options to valgrind, and this
+happen to be my personnal settings. Check the valgrind documentation for
+more information.
+
+\verbatim export VALGRIND_OPTS="--leak-check=yes --leak-resolution=high --num-callers=40 --tool=memcheck --suppressions=$HOME/.valgrind.supp" \endverbatim
+
\subsection faq_flexml_limit I get the message "surf_parse_lex: Assertion `next<limit' failed."
This is because your platform file is too big for the parser.
the development of FleXML, I can grant you that any patches would be really
welcome and quickly integrated.
+\subsection faq_gras_transport GRAS spits networking error messages
+
+Gras, on real platforms, naturally use regular sockets to communicate. They
+are deeply hiden in the gras abstraction, but when things go wrong, you may
+get some weird error messages. Here are some example, with the probable
+reason:
+
+ - <b>Transport endpoint is not connected</b>: several processes try to open
+ a server socket on the same port number of the same machine. This is
+ naturally bad and each process should pick its own port number for this.\n
+ Maybe, you just have some processes remaining from a previous experiment
+ on your machine.\n
+ Killing them may help, but again if you kill -KILL them, you'll have to
+ wait for a while: they didn't close there sockets properly and the system
+ needs a while to notice that this port is free again.
+
+ - <b>Socket closed by remote side</b>: if the remote process is not
+ supposed to close the socket at this point, it may be dead.
+
+ - <b>Connection reset by peer</b>: I found this on internet about this
+ error. I think it's what's happening here, too:\n
+ <i>This basically means that a network error occurred while the client was
+ receiving data from the server. But what is really happening is that the
+ server actually accepts the connection, processes the request, and sends
+ a reply to the client. However, when the server closes the socket, the
+ client believes that the connection has been terminated abnormally
+ because the socket implementation sends a TCP reset segment telling the
+ client to throw away the data and report an error.\n
+ Sometimes, this problem is caused by not properly closing the
+ input/output streams and the socket connection. Make sure you close the
+ input/output streams and socket connection properly. If everything is
+ closed properly, however, and the problem persists, you can work around
+ it by adding a one-second sleep before closing the streams and the
+ socket. This technique, however, is not reliable and may not work on all
+ systems.</i>\n
+ Since GRAS sockets are closed properly (repeat after me: there is no bug
+ in GRAS), it is either that you are closing your sockets on server side
+ before the client get a chance to read them (use gras_os_sleep() to delay
+ the server), or the server died awfully before the client got the data.
+
\subsection faq_deadlock There is a deadlock !!!
Unfortunately, we cannot debug every code written in SimGrid. We
on your side... We have plenty of FAQ entries to redact and new
features to implement for the impenitents! ;)
+\subsection faq_big_fat_warning A BIG FAT WARNING is reported telling me that my platform and deployment files are too old.
+
+We have decided to change the units in SimGrid. Now we use Bytes, Flops and
+seconds instead of MBytes, MFlops and seconds... Units should be updated
+accordingly and the version of platform_description should be set to a
+valuer greater than 1:
+\verbatim
+ <platform_description version="1">
+\endverbatim
+You should try to use the surfxml_update.pl script that can be found
+<a href="http://gforge.inria.fr/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/contrib/platform_generation/?cvsroot=cvsroot%2Fsimgrid">here</a>.
+
+\subsection faq_surf_network_latency I get weird timings when I play with the latencies.
+
+OK, first of all, remember that units should be Bytes, Flops and
+Seconds. If you don't use such units, some SimGrid constants (e.g. the
+SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA constant used in most network models) won't have the
+right unit and you'll end up with weird results.
+
+Here is what happens with a single transfer of size L on a link
+(bw,lat) when nothing else happens.
+
+\verbatim
+0-----lat--------------------------------------------------t
+|-----|**** real_bw =min(bw,SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat)) *****|
+\endverbatim
+
+In more complex situations, this min is the solution of a complex
+max-min linear system. Have a look
+<a href="http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/simgrid-devel/2006-April/thread.html">here</a>
+and read the two threads "Bug in SURF?" and "Surf bug not
+fixed?". You'll have a few other examples of such computations. You
+can also read "A Network Model for Simulation of Grid Application" by
+Henri Casanova and Loris Marchal to have all the details. The fact
+that the real_bw is smaller than bw is easy to understand. The fact
+that real_bw is smaller than SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat) is due to the
+window-based congestion mechanism of TCP. With TCP, you can't exploit
+your huge network capacity if you don't have a good round-trip-time
+because of the acks...
+
+Anyway, what you get is t=lat + L/min(bw,SG_TCP_CTE_GAMMA/(2*lat)).
+
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.00001), you get t = 1.00001 (you fully
+use your link)
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.0001), you get t = 1.0001 (you're on the
+limit)
+ * if I you set (bw,lat)=(100 000 000, 0.001), you get t = 10.001 (ouch!)
+
+This bound on the effective bandwidth of a flow is not the only thing
+that may make your result be unexpected. For example, two flows
+competing on a saturated link receive an amount of bandwidth inversely
+proportional to their round trip time.
+
+\subsection faq_bugrepport So I've found a bug in SimGrid. How to report it?
+
+We do our best to make sure to hammer away any bugs of SimGrid, but this is
+still an academic project so please be patient if/when you find bugs in it.
+If you do, the best solution is to drop an email either on the simgrid-user
+or the simgrid-devel mailing list and explain us about the issue. You can
+also decide to open a formal bug report using the
+<a href="https://gforge.inria.fr/tracker/?atid=165&group_id=12&func=browse">relevant
+interface</a>. You need to login on the server to get the ability to submit
+bugs.
+
+We will do our best to solve any problem repported, but you need to help us
+finding the issue. Just telling "it segfault" isn't enough. Telling "It
+segfaults when running the attached simulator" doesn't really help either.
+You may find the following article interesting to see how to repport
+informative bug repports:
+http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html (it is not SimGrid
+specific at all, but it's full of good advices).
+
\author Arnaud Legrand (arnaud.legrand::imag.fr)
\author Martin Quinson (martin.quinson::loria.fr)
