Test parameter files without running them

[Ian Hinder]

It would be useful to be able to check that the parameters of a run are OK before running it. Since there can be long queue times on supercomputers, it would be good to do this on a local machine which might not have as much memory as is required for the full run. Currently, running the job would cause memory exhaustion on the smaller machine.

One solution would be an additional command-line argument to Cactus --exit-after-paramcheck which stops the run cleanly after the PARAMCHECK Cactus bin. This is preferable to a new Cactus parameter, as it would not require the parameter file to be modified. One could imagine this also being potentially used by simfactory automatically when submitting a job (though this would only work if you could run MPI executables on the head node).

Keyword:

[Ian Hinder]

This won't be implemented before the release. Removing milestone.

[Frank Löffler]

Is the CCTK_Exit(NULL,0); within CactusInitialiseGH intentional? Doesn't this always abort the run?

[Erik Schnetter]

The message just before exiting Cactus should be longer and explains what happens, and e.g. point to the command line option that was used.

[Steven R. Brandt]

Sorry, the changes to "src/main/CactusDefaultInitialise.c" should be removed from the patch. In my tests, I could not get this routine to actually be called. I'd intended to remove that call. The one in WarnLevel.c is the one that actually aborts the run.

[Erik Schnetter]

CactusDefaultInitialise is called if the driver does not provide an initalisation routine. Carpet does, I don't recall whether PUGH does as well. Try running with an empty parameter file (no thorns active) to have this routine called.

[Erik Schnetter]

Please apply.

[Roland Haas]

Steve: do you want to apply this or are there more outstanding issues?

[Roland Haas]

Looks ok (just in case there is need for a second ok).

[Peter Diener]

A couple of things where fixed in order to get the parameter to show up in the parameter listing and make the short version (-P) work.