Obtaining and Unpacking the Distribution


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mpich can be obtained by anonymous ftp from the site ftp.mcs.anl.gov. Go to the directory pub/mpi and get the file mpich.tar.gz. This file name is a link to the most recent verstion of mpich. Currently it is about nine Megabytes in size. First, choose a directory into which to unpack the tar file. We recommend either using a local (not an NFS) file system; this will speed the process of building mpich. The file is a gzipped tar file, so it may be unpacked with

    gunzip -c mpich.tar.gz | tar xovf - 
or, when using the GNU tar (e.g., under Linux),
    tar zxvf mpich.tar.gz 
If you do not have gunzip, but do have uncompress, then you must get mpich.tar.Z instead, and use either
    zcat mpich.tar.Z | tar xovf - 
or
    uncompress mpich.tar.Z 
    tar xvf mpich.tar 
This will create a single directory called mpich, containing in various subdirectories the entire distribution, including all of the source code, some documentation (including this Guide), man pages, the mpich environment described in Section The mpich Programming Environment , and example programs. In particular, you should see the following files and directories:
{ COPYRIGHT}
Copyright statement. This code is free but not public domain. It is copyrighted by the University of Chicago and Mississippi State University.
{ Makefile.in}
Template for the Makefile, which will be produced when you run configure.
{ MPI-2-C++}
The C++ system from Notre Dame. It includes the C++ bindings for the MPI-1 functions.
{ README}
Basic information and instructions for configuring.
{ aclocal.m4}
Used for building configure from configure.in; not needed for most installations. The file aclocal_tcl.m4 is included by aclocal.m4.
{ ccbugs}
Directory for programs that test the C compiler during configuration, to make sure that it will be able to compile the system.
{ configure}
The script that you run to create Makefiles throughout the system.
{ configure.in}
Input to autoconf that produces configure.
{ doc}
Assorted tools for producing documentation, together with this Installation Guide and the User's Guide.
{ examples}
Directory containing further directories of example MPI programs. Of particular note are basic, with a few small examples to try first, test, with a test suite for exercising mpich, and perftest, containing benchmarking code.
{ include}
The include files, both user and system.
{ bin}
Contains the programs and executable scripts, such as mpicc and mpirun, used to build and run MPI programs.
{ man}
Man pages for MPI, MPE, and internal routines.
{ mpe}
The source code for the MPE extensions for logging and X graphics. The contrib directory contains examples. Best are the mandel and mastermind subdirectories. The profiling subdirectory contains the profiling subsystem, including a system for automatically generating the ``wrappers'' for the MPI profiling interface. MPE also includes the performance visualization programs, such as jumpshot (see Section Jumpshot ).
{ mpid}
The source code for the various ``devices'' that customize mpich for a particular machine, operating system, and environment.
{ romio}
The ROMIO parallel I/O system, which includes an implementation of most of the MPI-2 parallel I/O standard.
{ src}
The source code for the portable part of mpich. There are subdirectories for the various parts of the MPI specification.
{ util}
Utility programs and files.
{ www}
HTML versions of the man pages.

If you have problems, check the mpich home page on the Web at http://www.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/mpich . This page has pointers to lists of known bugs and patchfiles. If you don't find what you need here, send mail to mpi-bugs@mcs.anl.gov.



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