[Users] simfactory

[Erik Schnetter]

On Feb 5, 2014, at 12:16 , Vassilios Mewes <vassilios.mewes at uv.es> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Ian Hinder <ian.hinder at aei.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> A "simulation", as far as simfactory is concerned, is a directory, which might be in /scratch/username/simulations.  This usually corresponds to a single parameter file, and is logically "one cactus run".  However, because jobs on clusters usually are limited to 24 hours, you need multiple jobs to form a longer simulation.  SimFactory calls these different segments of the simulation "restarts", as the second one is restarted from the first, etc.  The restarts correspond to directories output-NNNN in the simulation directory.  Each new Cactus job in the simulation is run inside this output-NNNN directory.  The parameter file usually specifies the name of the directory to put data into.  Some users use '$parfile' which names the output directory after the parameter file.  
> 
> I usually name the simulation after the parameter file, and output the data into a directory also named after the parameter file, so my data would go in
> 
> /scratch/username/simulations/bbh/output-NNNN/bbh/phi.x.asc
> 
> for a simulation called bbh, and an output file called phi.x.asc.
> 
> Does this make things clearer?
> 
> yes, thanks for the explanation!
> 
> So in that case, you would set 
> 
> IO::out_dir = bbh
> IO::checkpoint_dir = bbh
> and 
> IO::recover_dir = bbh ??

Yes. Actually, you can write

IO::out_dir = $parfile

instead, so that you don't need to change these lines when you change the file name.

> And another question about the restarts of the entire simulation: Do I need to use the TerminationTrigger thorn for that and set the walltime I have on the cluster (minus some time to do the checkpointing before the termination)

That is one way. Actually, you can set TerminationTrigger::on_remaining_walltime = 20 to trigger termination when you have 20 minutes left. Simfactory will automatically fill in the correct value for TerminationTrigger::max_walltime if you set this parameter (to any value) in your parameter file.

> sorry for all the stupid questions, but this is the first time I will actually have to use the simfactory!

I hope it simplifies things!

-erik

-- 
Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/

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