confused about module command

English Applications
1

I have built software several times, and just finished building openmpi on my opensuse 12.1 - the trouble is that the installations instructions for another piece of software mention installing the “openmpi module” - I can’t figure out what this means:

$> module load mpi/openmpi_xxxxx

First of all, there doesn’t seem to be a command “module” in linux, and secondly I thought one used openmpi via its shared object or static object libraries - can anyone help me understand this request for a module?

Thank You!
Patti

EDIT: more confusion - in /opt there is an mpich directory that contains some .mod files - I assume those are the default opensuse 12.1 install of openmpi - but there didn’t seem to be any .mod files when I built openmpi 1.5.5 from source. why not if they’re needed???

2

Usually, the software install will put the module somewhere under “/lib/modules”. And one then uses


# modprobe module-name

to load the module. There’s a man page for modprobe.

3

I don’t know anything about openmpi, and only looked at its website for all of about 30s, so I can’t help you in particular, but glancing at the above, I’d suspect that it was written as a generic instruction, where upon the user would apply the appropriate module loading command under the OS they are running for a particular openmpi module. For example, under Linux you’d want “modprobe modulename”, whereas under Solaris or *bsd it would require using "modload … " etc …

4

Thanks - that gets me on the right track, at least. I’ve seen the command “modprobe” before… But I don’t get why it needs a module in the first place - I thought things like mpif90 and the libraries provided everything a program needed to use openmpi/LAM/mpich etc. So I’m missing something basic for Linux, I guess…

5

On 2012-04-28 21:56, Tyler K wrote:
> under Linux you’d want “modprobe modulename”, whereas under Solaris or
> *bsd it would require using "modload … " etc …

That is for loading kernel modules, it can not apply here.

If it means loading dynamic libraries, it is done automatically if the
loader knows about it, which is done with “ldconfig”.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)