Can MPI_Publish_name be used for two separately started applications?

Question

I write an OpenMPI application which consists of a server and a client part which are launched separately:

me@server1:~> mpirun server

and

me@server2:~> mpirun client

server creates a port using MPI_Open_port. The question is: Does OpenMPI have a mechanism to communicate the port to client? I suppose that MPI_Publish_name and MPI_Lookup_name doesn't work here because server wouldn't know to which other computer the information should be sent.

To me, it looks like only processes which were started using a single mpirun can communicate with MPI_Publish_name.

I also found ompi-server, but the documentation is too minimalistic for me to understand this. Does anyone know how this is used?

Related: MPICH: How to publish_name such that a client application can lookup_name it? and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9263458/client-server-example-using-ompi-does-not-work

Answer 1

MPI_Publish_name is supplied with an MPI info object, which could have an Open MPI specific boolean key ompi_global_scope. If this key is set to true, then the name would be published to the global scope, i.e. to an already running instance of ompi-server. MPI_Lookup_name by default first does a global name lookup if the URI of the ompi-server was provided.

With a dedicated Open MPI server

The process involves several steps:

1) Start the ompi-server somewhere in the cluster where it could be accessed from all nodes. For debugging purposes you may pass it the --no-daemonize -r + argument. It would start and print to the standard output an URI similar to this one:

$ ompi-server --no-daemonize -r +
1221656576.0;tcp://10.1.13.164:36351;tcp://192.168.221.41:36351

2) In the server, build an MPI info object and set the ompi_global_scope key to true:

MPI_Info info;

MPI_Info_create(&info);
MPI_Info_set(info, "ompi_global_scope", "true");

Then pass the info object to MPI_Publish_name:

MPI_Publish_name("server", info, port_name);

3) In the client, the call to MPI_Lookup_name would automatically do the lookup in the global context first (this could be changed by providing the proper key in the MPI info object, but in your case the default behaviour should suffice).

In order for both client and server code to know where the ompi-server is located, you have to give its URI to both mpirun commands with the --ompi-server 1221656576.0;tcp://10.1.13.164:36351;tcp://192.168.221.41:36351 option.

Another option is to have ompi-server write the URI to a file, which can then be read on the node(s) where mpirun is to be run. For example, if you start the server on the same node where both mpirun commands are executed, then you could use a file in /tmp. If you start the ompi-server on a different node, then a shared file system (NFS, Lustre, etc.) would do. Either way, the set of commands would be:

$ ompi-server [--no-daemonize] -r file:/path/to/urifile
...
$ mpirun --ompi-server file:/path/to/urifile server
...
$ mpirun --ompi-server file:/path/to/urifile client

Serverless method

If run both mpirun's on the same node, the --ompi-server could also specify the PID of an already running mpirun instance to be used as a name server. It allows you to use local name publishing in the server (i.e. skip the "run an ompi-server" and "make an info object" parts). The sequence of commands would be:

head-node$ mpirun --report-pid server
[ note the PID of this mpirun instance ]
...
head-node$ mpirun --ompi-server pid:12345 client

where 12345 should be replaced by the real PID of the server's mpirun.

You can also have the server's mpirun print its URI and pass that URI to the client's mpirun:

$ mpirun --report-uri + server
[ note the URI ]
...
$ mpirun --ompi-server URI client

You could also have the URI written to a file if you specify /path/to/file (note: no file: prefix here) instead of + after the --report-uri option:

$ mpirun --report-uri /path/to/urifile server
...
$ mpirun --ompi-server file:/path/to/urifile client

Note that the URI returned by mpirun has the same format as that of an ompi-server, i.e. it includes the host IP address, so it also works if the second mpirun is executed on a different node, which is able to talk to the first node via TCP/IP (and /path/to/urifile lives on a shared file system).

I tested all of the above with Open MPI 1.6.1. Some of the variant might not work with earlier versions.