[Rd] "LAPACK routine DGESDD gave error code -12" with Debian (PR#2822)

Camm Maguire camm at enhanced.com
Wed Apr 23 20:59:59 MEST 2003


Greetings!

1) This should have nothing to do with atlas, as atlas does not tune
   this routine, meaning you are using the stock routine from lapack.

nm --dynamic /usr/lib/liblapack_atlas.so.2.3 |grep dge
00003810 T ATL_dgetrf
00003590 T ATL_dgetrfC
00003870 T ATL_dgetrfR
00003ae0 T ATL_dgetrs
000047f0 T atl_f77wrap_dgesv__
000048b0 T atl_f77wrap_dgetnb__
000048e0 T atl_f77wrap_dgetrf__
00004970 T atl_f77wrap_dgetrs__
         U cblas_dgemm
00007c68 T clapack_dgesv
00007da0 T clapack_dgetrf
00007e90 T clapack_dgetrs
00009430 T dgesv_
00009500 T dgetrf_
000095b0 T dgetrs_
intech19:/fix/t2/camm/gcl-2.5.2$ 

   You can check this by verifying that the difficulty persists if you
   set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to /usr/lib

2) Given the error code, and the scaling behavior with matrix size,
   I'd say the lwork parameter (size of the work array) passed to
   dgesdd is not always large enough, i.e. is not scaling properly
   with n,m.  Please see 'man dgesdd' for interpretations of the error
   code.  It is the responsibility of the calling routine to allocate
   and pass the work array to dgesdd.  With most lapack routines, one
   can make a 'workspace query' call first by setting lwork to -1, or
   some such.  check the man page for details.  This of course would
   have to be done with each change in n,m.  Alternatively, you could
   take the minimum workspace requirements from the manpage.  

   lapack is the relevant lib, so I don't know what --without-blas is
   supposed to do.  And working under windows, while nice, doesn't
   exactly inspire confidence :-).

I am in general away from email until 6/1, so correspondence will be
spotty.

Take care,

Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 08:07:36PM +0200, rdiaz at cnio.es wrote:
> > Dear All,
> > 
> > Under Debian GNU/Linux La.svd (with method = "dgesdd") sometimes gives the 
> > error
> > 
> > "Error in La.svd(data, nu = 0, nv = min(nrow, ncol), method = "dgesdd") : 
> > 	LAPACK routine DGESDD gave error code -12"
> > 
> > It seems not to depend on the data per se, but on the relationship between 
> > numbers of rows and columns. 
> > 
> > For example, if the number of columns is 100, La.svd will fail when the number 
> > of rows is 56, but not if it is 55 or 57. It will not fail if we use 
> > "dgesvd". If the number of columns is 51, La.svd fails when the number of 
> > rows is between 29 and 50 if we use "dgesdd".
> > 
> > This happens if I use the latest deb packages (and thus ATLAS, etc). It does 
> > not happen if I build R in this same machine with "--without-blas" (where 
> > make check reports no errors). In case it matters, the bug does not show up 
> > in a different machine with Windwos 2000 and the Rblas.dll linked against 
> > ATLAS provided in http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/ATLAS/P4).
> > 
> > I understand this is probably related to the issues mentioned in R-admin about 
> > LAPACK 3.0 and some of the issues recently discussed in this list by M. 
> > Burger, D. Bates and D. Eddelbuettel. Are there any workarounds (besides not 
> > using ATLAS at all?).
> 
> We should probably talk to Camm, the Atlas maintainer. Note how on recent
> upgrades he inserted the note (cf /var/lib/dpkg/info/atlas2-3dnow.templates
> on my Athlon system) via debconf:
> 
>    Template: atlas2-3dnow/3dnow_warning
>    Type: note
>    Description: 3dnow arithmetic is not IEEE compliant
>     Please note that 3dnow arithmetic does not furnish several results
>     required by the IEEE standard, and may therefore cause errors in code
>     which needs to trap NaN and Inf results, for example.  The
>     atlas2-3dnow binaries make heavy use of the 3dnow extensions.
>     Please see the accompanying file /usr/share/doc/atlas2-3dnow/3DNow.txt
>     for details.
>       
> I know Camm is on a sabbatical but will CC him nonetheless.
> 
> Dirk
> 
> > Ramón
> > 
> > ********************************
> > An example of failure:
> > > ## ncol = 100
> > > nrow <- 56
> > > ncol <- 100
> > > data <- matrix(1:(nrow * ncol), ncol = ncol)
> > > ## you get the errors if you use any other data
> > > ## such as data <- matrix(rnorm(nrow * ncol), ncol = ncol)
> > > svd(data) ## error
> > > La.svd(data, nu = 0,
> >              nv = min(nrow, ncol), method = "dgesdd") ## error
> > > La.svd(data, nu = 0,
> >              nv = min(nrow, ncol), method = "dgesvd") ## OK
> > 
> > > ##ncol = 51; it fails with nrow in [29, 50]
> > *************************
> > 
> > > ## version that crashes
> > > version 
> >          _                
> > platform i386-pc-linux-gnu
> > arch     i386             
> > os       linux-gnu        
> > system   i386, linux-gnu  
> > status                    
> > major    1                
> > minor    7.0              
> > year     2003             
> > month    04               
> > day      16               
> > language R        
> > *****************************
> > > ## version "--without-blas" that does not crash
> > > version
> >          _  
> > platform i686-pc-linux-gnu
> > arch     i686             
> > os       linux-gnu        
> > system   i686, linux-gnu  
> > status                    
> > major    1                
> > minor    7.0              
> > year     2003             
> > month    04               
> > day      16               
> > language R   
> > 
> > 
> > -----
> > Ramón Díaz-Uriarte
> > Bioinformatics Unit
> > Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)
> > (Spanish National Cancer Center)
> > Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3
> > 28029 Madrid (Spain)
> > Fax: +-34-91-224-6972
> > Phone: +-34-91-224-6900
> > 
> > http://bioinfo.cnio.es/~rdiaz
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Don't drink and derive. Alcohol and algebra don't mix.
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Camm Maguire			     			camm at enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah



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