Troubleshooting for Distributed Memory Simulations

A number of things can prevent distributed memory solutions from completing successfully. This section provides suggestions to debug problems.

It is often a good idea to set up and run a small simulation with two processes on a single machine before moving to a large cluster. Using a single machine will allow you to verify that the EM software and MPI are installed correctly while eliminating problems arising from remote installation, authentication and firewall settings.

Many problems occur because the MPI software cannot start and run due to authentication and firewall issues. Please check with your MPI vendor and their end user documentation for information about how to verify that authentication and firewall settings are correct.

Recall that HFSS must be installed in the same directory on all machines in the cluster and that the cluster must be uniform (e.g., all Linux machines, all 64 bit Windows machines).

Verify that the version of the third party MPI software is identical on all the machines and that it is a supported version.

Verify that the machine names are correct and that all the machines can be reached on the network.