Bug#1080199: parmetis: autopkgtest regressions with mpich as default provider on 32 bit architectures

[Sebastien Bacher]

Source: parmetis
Followup-For: Bug #1080199
X-Debbugs-Cc: seb128 at ubuntu.com

Hi,

The armhf failure is because mpich's mpirun (hydra) does not look for the
program in the current directory, so "mpirun -np 4 LL_parmetis" fails with
"execvp error on file LL_parmetis". Running "./LL_parmetis" fixes it; I
checked with mpich 5.0.1, where a bare program name fails exactly like
this and "./" works.

The test has a second problem with OpenMPI 5 on 64-bit architectures:
OpenMPI 5 ignores the OMPI_MCA_* variables the test sets, so on machines
with fewer than 4 cores it fails with "There are not enough slots
available in the system to satisfy the 4 slots". Setting the PRRTE
equivalents fixes it:

  export PRTE_MCA_plm_ssh_agent=/bin/false
  export PRTE_MCA_rmaps_default_mapping_policy=:oversubscribe

I kept the old variables so the test still works with OpenMPI 4.

With both changes, the test passes on a 2-CPU Ubuntu stonking container
with OpenMPI 5.0.10 and fails without them. I have not tested with the
OpenMPI 6.0 release candidate in unstable.

The attached debdiff against 4.0.3-7 changes only debian/tests/build1.

Regards,
Sebastien


-- System Information:
Debian Release: forky/sid
  APT prefers resolute-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'resolute-updates'), (500, 'resolute-security'), (500, 'resolute'), (100, 'resolute-backports')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-38-generic (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_WARN, TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
-------------- next part --------------
diff -Nru parmetis-4.0.3/debian/changelog parmetis-4.0.3/debian/changelog
--- parmetis-4.0.3/debian/changelog	2022-07-17 22:21:07.000000000 +0200
+++ parmetis-4.0.3/debian/changelog	2026-10-09 11:08:23.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+parmetis (4.0.3-8) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
+
+  * d/tests/build1: run ./LL_parmetis, mpich's mpirun does not search
+    the current directory (Closes: #1080199).
+  * d/tests/build1: also set the OpenMPI 5 (PRRTE) variables to allow
+    oversubscription and disable the ssh agent; OpenMPI 5 ignores the
+    OMPI_MCA_* names.
+
+ -- Sebastien Bacher <seb128 at ubuntu.com>  Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:08:23 +0200
+
 parmetis (4.0.3-7) unstable; urgency=medium
 
   * Team upload.
diff -Nru parmetis-4.0.3/debian/tests/build1 parmetis-4.0.3/debian/tests/build1
--- parmetis-4.0.3/debian/tests/build1	2022-07-17 22:18:27.000000000 +0200
+++ parmetis-4.0.3/debian/tests/build1	2026-10-09 11:08:23.000000000 +0200
@@ -9,8 +9,11 @@
 
 set -e
 
+# OpenMPI 4 names, and their OpenMPI 5 (PRRTE) equivalents
 export OMPI_MCA_orte_rsh_agent=/bin/false
 export OMPI_MCA_rmaps_base_oversubscribe=1
+export PRTE_MCA_plm_ssh_agent=/bin/false
+export PRTE_MCA_rmaps_default_mapping_policy=:oversubscribe
 
 WORKDIR=$(mktemp -d)
 trap "rm -rf $WORKDIR" 0 INT QUIT ABRT PIPE TERM
@@ -231,5 +234,5 @@
 
 echo "build: OK"
 [ -x LL_parmetis ]
-mpirun -np 4 LL_parmetis
+mpirun -np 4 ./LL_parmetis
 echo "run: OK"
\ No newline at end of file