Configuring PVM

Before using PVM every user has to complete a number of configuration tasks. These task depend on the way PVM was installed on your system and the characteristics of your system. Instead of trying to cover all the different systems we will assume the following,

Shared home directories - you have the same set of files regardless of which computer you logged into.
PVM is already installed on all the machines you want to use
PVM libraries in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib - directories the compiler searches automatically
PVM include files in /usr/include - directory the compiler searches automatically

You can still use PVM if one or more of these are not true in your system. However there are a couple of things you have to do additionally or differently.

Step 1: Find out which computers are available

You can use any computer which fulfills the following requirements:

You have an account on it.
PVM is installed

Step 2: Edit/create the file .rhosts in your home directory

Every computer you want to use needs an entry in the .rhosts file consisting of the name of the computer and your login name on that machine. This file has to exist on all the machines you want to use.

ucs.orst.edu kowallih
daphy.physics.orst.edu hans
goophy.physics.orst.edu hans
mango.physics.orst.edu hans
banana.physics.orst.edu hans
coconut.physics.orst.edu hans
papaya.physics.orst.edu hans

This is part of my .rhosts file at the Physics Department at Oregon State University. Goophy and daphy are DEC alphas, ucs is the main mail machine on campus and the tropical fruits are IBM RS6000. If your login name is the same on all machines then you can leave the field with the login name blank, but it doesn't hurt to put it in.

Step 3: Set environment variables

If you use csh or tcsh then add the following lines to your .cshrc file,

setenv PVM_ROOT /usr/local/pvm3
setenv PVM_ARCH `$PVM_ROOT/lib/pvmgetarch`
setenv XPVM_ROOT /usr/local/pvm3/xpvm
set path=($path $PVM_ROOT/lib)
set path=($path $PVM_ROOT/lib/$PVM_ARCH)

If there is no pvm3 directory in /usr/local then you have to change the first entry to whatever directory holds these files.

Step 4: Create directories for your executables

Although this step is not necessary for PVM to work, it will make your life much easier if you are going to use PVM on computers with different architectures.

mkdir $HOME/pvm3/bin/PVM_ARCH

where PVM_ARCH is the PVM code for the architecture. At the Physics Department a normal user has acess to two DEC alphas and six IBM RS6000 and has to create the directories,
$HOME/pvm3/bin/ALPHA
$HOME/pvm3/bin/RS6K
If you have access to different computers, you can find the PVM code for its architecture on this list or you can use the PVM function pvmgetarch to get this information. Log into the computer you want to use, type

pvmgetarch

and the PVM code for this architecture will be displayed.

Previous: Getting started with PVM
Next: The PVM console