[R-sig-hpc] Using R in a linux cluster

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Hi Paco,

On 15 June 2010 at 16:02, Paco Pastor wrote:
| I'd like to use R in a Ubuntu cluster so I have installed R and Rmpi in 
| a clean Ubuntu Lucid installation. Reading about Rmpi I need to have R 
| and Rmpi installed in all nodes in the cluster. I have tried to export R 
| executable and /usr/lib/R to the other nodes. When I try to run R in 

No, that won't work.

[...]
| Then, after exporting /etc/R I get a the same error with libblas.so.3gf 
| not found
| 
| What should be better? to install R and Rmpi in every node or to export 

Yes. 

All nodes need to 'symmetric' ie have R, the same packages, libraries, ...
Even the paths should be identical.

| R and all dependencies from the master node to the rest of nodes in the 
| cluster? I'd prefer to keep R installed just in the master node so any 
| packages update or config changes are not to be repeated in the other 
| nodes (just 2, not a big deal but...)

A common solution is to have the master either be an NFS server or write to
an NFS server.  Eg I have one /usr/local/lib/R/site-packages/ and the other
machines access this via NFS.  Pretty easy when you use autofs auto-mounting.

But as so often, you need an extra bit of sys.admining to get all this going.

-- 
  Regards, Dirk