[R-sig-hpc] unable to create localhost clusters with doSNOW

[luke at stat.uiowa.edu]

Others have been able to use snow successfully on R 2.11 so it looks
like some more help in debugging from those having problems will be
needed.

luke

On Fri, 20 Aug 2010, Abhijit Dasgupta, PhD wrote:

> I've had the same problem with SNOW on R 2.11 on Windows on both 32-bit 
> and 64-bit versions. This problem did not exist on R 2.10. On Linux, 
> this problem does not exist.
>
> Abhijit
>
> On 08/20/2010 10:52 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>> On 20 August 2010 at 11:32, Roman Luštrik wrote:
>> | I'm trying to parallel compute with doSNOW and foreach package (%dopar%) 
> on
>> | my 4 core W7 32 bit machine.
>> |
>> | I'm stuck at the first line when I try to create a cluster
>> |
>> | wrk<-  makeCluster(spec = 4, type = "SOCK")
>> |
>> | The computer hangs and waits until I stop the process.
>>
>> I am not the best person for advice on Windows but I think what this means 
> is
>> that you cannot spawn extra shells on your machine via the default 
> mechanism,
>> which I believe to be ssh.
>>
>> Whereas on my Linux box, using first a quick ssh test and then a one-line
>> invocation of R via r (aka littler, and older cousin of Rscript):
>>
>> edd at max:~$ ssh localhost hostname    # proves I can ssh to myself
>> max
>> edd at max:~$ r -lsnow -e'wrk<- makeCluster(spec = 4, type = "SOCK"); 
> print(str(wrk)); stopCluster(wrk)'
>> Loading required package: utils
>> Loading required package: utils
>> Loading required package: utils
>> Loading required package: utils
>> List of 4
>>   $ :List of 3
>>    ..$ con :Classes 'sockconn', 'connection'  atomic [1:1] 3
>>    .. .. ..- attr(*, "conn_id")=<externalptr>
>>    ..$ host: chr "localhost"
>>    ..$ rank: int 1
>>    ..- attr(*, "class")= chr "SOCKnode"
>>   $ :List of 3
>>    ..$ con :Classes 'sockconn', 'connection'  atomic [1:1] 4
>>    .. .. ..- attr(*, "conn_id")=<externalptr>
>>    ..$ host: chr "localhost"
>>    ..$ rank: int 2
>>    ..- attr(*, "class")= chr "SOCKnode"
>>   $ :List of 3
>>    ..$ con :Classes 'sockconn', 'connection'  atomic [1:1] 5
>>    .. .. ..- attr(*, "conn_id")=<externalptr>
>>    ..$ host: chr "localhost"
>>    ..$ rank: int 3
>>    ..- attr(*, "class")= chr "SOCKnode"
>>   $ :List of 3
>>    ..$ con :Classes 'sockconn', 'connection'  atomic [1:1] 6
>>    .. .. ..- attr(*, "conn_id")=<externalptr>
>>    ..$ host: chr "localhost"
>>    ..$ rank: int 4
>>    ..- attr(*, "class")= chr "SOCKnode"
>>   - attr(*, "class")= chr [1:2] "SOCKcluster" "cluster"
>> NULL
>> edd at max:~$
>>
>> Now, you don't _have_ to use ssh but it may well be fallback. You may need 
> to
>> peruse the snow documentation to learn which other authentication 
> mechanisms
>> you have your disposal.
>>
>> Dirk
>>
>>
>> | Following some advice from this
>> | list<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.hpc/216/>,
>> | I tried "nudging" it from another terminal (running the same command). I 
> got
>> | the following error.
>> |
>> | Error in socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
>> |   cannot open the connection
>> | In addition: Warning message:
>> | In socketConnection(port = port, server = TRUE, blocking = TRUE,  :
>> |   port 10187 cannot be opened
>> |
>> | Per advice from the same link I tried adding outfile argument, but 
> nothing
>> | happened (looks like cluster wasn't created).
>> |
>> | wrk<- makeSOCKcluster(rep("localhost", 4), manual = TRUE, outfile =
>> | "d:/workspace/para/snow.log")
>> |
>> | Manually start worker on localhost with
>> |      C:\Program Files\R\R-2.11.1/bin/Rscript.exe
>> | C:/Users/romunov/Documents/R/win-library/2.11/snow/RSOCKnode.R
>> | MASTER=localhost PORT=10187 OUT=d:/workspace/para/snow.log
>> | SNOWLIB=C:/Users/romunov/Documents/R/win-library/2.11
>> |
>> | I have tried turning off firewall and program blocker, but I got the 
> same,
>> | unresponsive, result. Any suggestions welcome.
>> |
>> | Cheers,
>> | Roman
>> |
>> |
>> |
>> | R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)
>> | i386-pc-mingw32
>> |
>> | locale:
>> | [1] LC_COLLATE=Slovenian_Slovenia.1250  LC_CTYPE=Slovenian_Slovenia.1250
>> | [3] LC_MONETARY=Slovenian_Slovenia.1250 LC_NUMERIC=C
>> | [5] LC_TIME=Slovenian_Slovenia.1250
>> |
>> | attached base packages:
>> | [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>> |
>> | other attached packages:
>> | [1] doSNOW_1.0.3    snow_0.3-3      foreach_1.3.0   codetools_0.2-2
>> | [5] iterators_1.0.3
>> |
>> | loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>> | [1] tools_2.11.1
>> |
>> | --
>> | In God we trust, all others bring data.
>> |
>> | 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>> |
>> | _______________________________________________
>> | R-sig-hpc mailing list
>> | R-sig-hpc at r-project.org
>> | https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-hpc
>>
>> 
>
>
>

-- 
Luke Tierney
Statistics and Actuarial Science
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:      luke at stat.uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu