#487: SimFactory should allow steering of parameters between restarts --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: hinder | Owner: eschnett Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: major | Milestone: Component: SimFactory | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
Comment (by rhaas):
I have similar situations to the ones Bruno mentioned. In particular the AH issue happened during a current run for the CIGR BHNS project (and I "fixed" this by cloning the simulation directory by hand and modifying the parameter file). We also have been turning apparent horizon finding on and off during simulations which we do by either modifying the parameter file or even using HTTPD (eg. to turn off the AHFinderDirect after some evolution time has passed and to turn on an AHFinderDirect at the location of the merged BH once they merge).
Generally I find myself often playing with parameter files to find good settings whenever a simulation fails. Once I have found good ones I can often put them into a single parameter file (eg. using a simple thorn that lets me steer parameters at given iterations). While testing though it would be nice to be able to change parameter files easily. The --continue option might work for me in that respect. Would it be possible to link/mkdir in the output directories from the previous restarts instead of having the pointer mechanism that Ian suggested? That way the continued simulation would look like a normal one with changing parameter files and simplify postprocessing scripts.
I fully agree that for a production run the simulation is the unit of source code and parameter file and that it should not change during the whole simulation. On the other hand the fast majority of the SU that I use are used for testing runs where code and parameters do usually change for me (I might find a bug, find NaNs...).