[Rd] ATLAS threaded 64 bit (Opteron) - need *.so?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

You do need to add -fPIC to the compile flags.  The same thing happens on 
Solaris 64-bit (under some compilers, anyway).  You don't need a shared 
library, but you do need relocatable code in the static libraries.

You can also try building without xerbla.

I think this is a route that many of us are about to take.  However, I 
would avoid ATLAS and use K. Goto's Opteron BLAS, which is easier to get 
to work (no xerbla) and has instructions in R-devel's R-admin.texi file.

Peter D has a dual Opteron and asked about it a while back, probably on
R-core.  (I have played a bit, but our Opteron cluster is a week or so
away now.)

Brian

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Martin Maechler wrote:

> Using ATLAS with R is an old topic quite covered in the "R
> Administration" manual (and by R's "configure" script
> collection).
> 
> I still do not easily manage to build R properly on our new AMD
> Opteron (2-processor).
> I did work with the current Atlas 3.6.0, configured manually
> (but "express" version) to build a threaded ATLAS version, and
> successfully ran Atlas' own   "make ptsanity_test arch=Linux_HAMMER64SSE2_2"  
> sanity check as well.
> 
> As it is known, this builds only static (*.a) versions of the
> ATLAS libraries.  However, after an R site search for (something
> like) "ATLAS shared", I found Peter Dalgaard's message
>         http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02/archive/7158.html
> where PD confirmed it would work fine to link against the static
> ATLAS libraries.
> I didn't need (his suggestion of) using an explicit "-L..atlas_place...", 
> since these libraries are symbolically linked into
> /usr/local/lib/ which is searched by default.
> 
> Now, R's configure (R-devel of 2004-02-24) 
> finds the ATLAS setup well behaved, reporting
> 
> >>   R is now configured for x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
> >> 
> >>     Source directory:          ../R-devel
> >>     Installation directory:    /usr/local
> >> 
> >>     C compiler:                gcc  -g -O2 -Wall -Wno-comment
> >>     C++ compiler:              g++  -g -O2
> >>     Fortran compiler:          g77  -g -O2 -Wall -fno-f90 
> >> 
> >>     Interfaces supported:      X11
> >>     External libraries:        readline, BLAS(ATLAS)
>                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> and compilation (of course) goes fine till the crucial linking
> stage :
> 
> gcc -shared   -o libRlapack.so dlapack0.lo dlapack1.lo dlapack2.lo dlapack3.lo cmplx.lo  -lf77blas -latlas -L/usr/lib64 -L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.2.3 -L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.2.3/../../../../lib64 -L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/x86_64-redhat-linux/3.2.3/../../.. -L/lib/../lib64 -L/usr/lib/../lib64 -lfrtbegin -lg2c -lm -lgcc_s
> /usr/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib/libf77blas.a(xerbla.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC
> /usr/local/lib/libf77blas.a: could not read symbols: Bad value
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> 
> and I'm stuck to some extent.
> Note that the "recompile with -fPIC"  must related to the
> contents of ATLAS' libf77blas.a itself (or to "xerbla.o" more
> concretely), since all of R's  dlapack[0-3].lo are of course
> compile with -fPIC.
> 
> I tend to conclude that I do need shared versions of ATLAS'
> libraries?  If yes, I think I've seen instructions on how to
> build these.  Where?
> If these are really needed, I think I should add them to the
> corresponding "R administration manual" section, right?
> 
> Thanks in advance for your share of experience here.
> Martin
> 
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> 
> 

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595