Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
add FAQ about HPE/Cray and collections and why
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
Robert McLay committed Jun 17, 2024
1 parent 654f636 commit 2fdfa8c
Showing 1 changed file with 16 additions and 1 deletion.
17 changes: 16 additions & 1 deletion docs/source/040_FAQ.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -409,4 +409,19 @@ Why don't collections work on HPE/Cray systems?
that the module load() inside a modulefile are ignored for very
complicated reasons. Instead Lmod loads all modules listed in the
collection. This works well except when the list of modules is
different.
different on different nodes.

The reason why Lmod loads the list of modules in the collections
and ignores load() type functions in the modulefiles is complex.
The problem is when two or more modulefiles share the same
environment variable. Suppose that your site sets the variable
**MPI_HOME** (using *setenv()*) in each mpi modulefile. If Lmod
obeyed the load() function in each modulefile, then it would have
to delete the extra modules not in the collection. In the case
where the user switched mpi modules, Lmod would load both mpi
modules then delete one to match the list of names in the
collection. Unloading the second module would unset **MPI_HOME**
and leave this variable with no value. If a site depended on
**MPI_HOME** as part of mpi program startup script, then those
users would not be able to submit mpi programs.

0 comments on commit 2fdfa8c

Please sign in to comment.