It might well be that you need a configure test to determine whether this behavior occurs or not. Heck, it may even need to be a run-time test! Hrm.
Write a small C program that does something like the following (this is off the top of my head): fork a child child goes to sleep immediately sysv alloc a segment attach to it ipc rm it parent wakes up child child tries to attach to segment If that succeeds, then all is good. If not, then don't use this stuff. On May 3, 2010, at 10:55 AM, Samuel K. Gutierrez wrote: > Hi all, > > Does anyone know of a relatively portable solution for querying a > given system for the shmctl behavior that I am relying on, or is this > going to be a nightmare? Because, if I am reading this thread > correctly, the presence of shmget and Linux is not sufficient for > determining an adequate level of sysv support. > > Thanks! > > -- > Samuel K. Gutierrez > Los Alamos National Laboratory > > On May 2, 2010, at 7:48 AM, N.M. Maclaren wrote: > > > On May 2 2010, Ashley Pittman wrote: > >> On 2 May 2010, at 04:03, Samuel K. Gutierrez wrote: > >> > >> As to performance there should be no difference in use between sys- > >> V shared memory and file-backed shared memory, the instructions > >> issued and the MMU flags for the page should both be the same so > >> the performance should be identical. > > > > Not necessarily, and possibly not so even for far-future Linuces. > > On at least one system I used, the poxious kernel wrote the complete > > file to disk before returning - all right, it did that for System V > > shared memory, too, just to a 'hidden' file! But, if I recall, on > > another it did that only for file-backed shared memory - however, it's > > a decade ago now and I may be misremembering. > > > > Of course, that's a serious issue mainly for large segments. I was > > using multi-GB ones. I don't know how big the ones you need are. > > > >> The one area you do need to keep an eye on for performance is on > >> numa machines where it's important which process on a node touches > >> each page first, you can end up using different areas (pages, not > >> regions) for communicating in different directions between the same > >> pair of processes. I don't believe this is any different to mmap > >> backed shared memory though. > > > > On some systems it may be, but in bizarre, inconsistent, undocumented > > and unpredictable ways :-( Also, there are usually several system > > (and > > sometimes user) configuration options that change the behaviour, so > > you > > have to allow for that. My experience of trying to use those is that > > different uses have incompatible requirements, and most of the > > critical > > configuration parameters apply to ALL uses! > > > > In my view, the configuration variability is the number one nightmare > > for trying to write portable code that uses any form of shared memory. > > ARMCI seem to agree. > > > >>> Because of this, sysv support may be limited to Linux systems - > >>> that is, > >>> until we can get a better sense of which systems provide the shmctl > >>> IPC_RMID behavior that I am relying on. > > > > And, I suggest, whether they have an evil gotcha on one of the areas > > that > > Ashley Pittman noted. > > > > > > Regards, > > Nick Maclaren. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > devel mailing list > > de...@open-mpi.org > > http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/devel > > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list > de...@open-mpi.org > http://www.open-mpi.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/devel > -- Jeff Squyres jsquy...@cisco.com For corporate legal information go to: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/legal/cri/
