070) 21/05/09 Mathematica 7.0.1 installed This is the default version of mathematica now. I believe it's just a bugfix release with no new features. 069) 19/05/09 Workstations patched today The patches have not caused any side effects in testing. They will be rolled out this evening, starting 8pm. 068) 18/05/09 SuSE 11.1 image is now the default for new machines The new version of the image will now be installed by default on new machines. Documentation here: http://www-co.ch.cam.ac.uk/facilities/linux-workstations/ We will be upgrading everyone's machines over the next month or so. 067) 30/03/09 Workstations patched today Some people have reported Firefox crashes or other strange behaviour. The workstations were patched today, and although the patches were tested beforehand and didn't produce side effects on the test machine, I think the problems are down to one of the patches. In the worst cases you may need to reboot the machine once you log out as the graphical login screen does not restart. Once this is done the machine runs normally. Firefox runs normally once the Firefox app is restarted too. 066) 27/03/09 g95 wrapped to support library modules better I have wrapped the g95 compiler to support the local convention of using the LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to locate libraries at link time, and to set a runpath in the binary to locate them at runtime. 065) 26/03/09 Cambridge Structural Database 2009 installed module add csd/2009 to use it. I shall be withdrawing csd/2008 shortly to save disk space. 064) 18/03/09 ppmtompeg installed This was missing from the SuSE 10.3 netpbm package but has now been added locally. 063) 20/02/09 NAG nagfor compiler 5.2-662 installed This is a bugfix release for NAG 5.2. 062) 17/02/09 PGI 8.0-4 installed on 64-bit machines This is another bugfix release of 8.0. 061) 16/02/09 gnuplot versions There are a number of different versions of gnuplot available on the workstations which I am attempting to rationalise. Basically: use /usr/bin/gnuplot first. If that does not work for you, try 'module add gnuplot/32/4.2.4'. If that doesn't work, tell support@ch . Avoid using the 4.0.0 and 4.2.2 modules- they are installed but I am likely to withdraw them. Here's the current state of play: Native SuSE 4.2.0 (/usr/bin/gnuplot) - comes in 64-bit version on 64-bit machines - very slow to do remote plotting in 64-bit version - Minor bug with eps files not printing - has some other bugs Gnuplot 4.0.0 (module add gnuplot/32/4.0.0) - the same version we had on SuSE 10.2 - someone wanted it because of a bug in 4.2.0 - no readline support in our version - very out of date and lacks some features Gnuplot 4.2.2 (module add gnuplot/32/4.2.2) - 32-bit only - built in readline - built as an experiment to track down a bug - Minor bug with eps files not printing Gnuplot 4.2.4 (module add gnuplot/32/4.2.4) - 32-bit only - Full gnu readline - Minor bug with eps files not printing 060) 10/02/09 Please reboot workstations This only affects people who use one of the managed Linux workstations. If you are not sure look for the file /etc/theory-workstation-version on your machine- if it's there, please reboot your machine at the next convenient point. The reason is that we have applied a security patch to the kernel which won't be active until the machines are rebooted. Until you reboot you may find that removable media such as usb drives do not work correctly because the drivers have been updated. 059) 06/02/09 Aten installed module add aten to use it. Aten is a visualisation program. Be warned that it is not reliable on SuSE 10.2 and may crash. So far it seems OK on 10.3. 058) 30/01/09 PGI 8.0-3 installed on 64-bit SuSE 10.3 machines This is a bugfix release of the PGI 8.0 compiler. I am not installing it on the 32-bit machines as I believe it wouldn't get much use; if you want it on 32-bit then please request it by emailing support@ch.cam.ac.uk . 057) 19/12/08 Remember to switch workstations off before January 3rd The power will be going off at 7.30am January 3rd. Please shut your workstation down and turn it off at the wall before then. They can be booted up on January 5th. 056) 19/12/08 Intel MKL 10.1 installed This is a new release of MKL. 055) 17/12/08 Intel 11.0 compilers installed These are a new major version of the Intel compilers. They are very different from the 10.1 series and so are NOT the default. If you want to use them you will need to unload the icc, ifort, and idb modules, and load the new modules. Please note there is no new idb module. Loading either the icc or ifort compiler gives access to the idb debugger. Some things that have changed or you need to watch out for: idb now has a GUI. Use idbc to get the old behaviour. New -xHost option automatically optimises for the processor you compile on 32-bit compilers assume sse2 instructions present (ie your compiled code will not run on really old cpus such as the Pentium III unless you tell the compiler to use that instruction set) Objects built with ifort earlier than version 10.0 and that use certain Fortran features can't be linked with objects from ifort 11.0 and must be recompiled. OpenMP 3.0 support New Fortran 2003 features: Enumerators Type extension (not polymorphic) Allocatable scalar variables (not deferred-length character) ERRMSG keyword for ALLOCATE and DEALLOCATE SOURCE= keyword for ALLOCATE MAX/MIN/MAXVAL/MINVAL/MAXLOC/MINLOC with CHARACTER arguments Intrinsic modules IEEE_EXCEPTIONS, IEEE_ARITHMETIC and IEEE_FEATURES ASSOCIATE construct PROCEDURE declaration Procedure pointers ABSTRACT INTERFACE PASS and NOPASS attributes (although these don't mix with procedure pointers yet) Structure constructors with component names and default initialization Array constructors with type and character length specifications BLANK, DELIM, ENCODING, IOMSG, PAD, ROUND, SIGN, SIZE I/O keywords DC, DP, RD, RC, RN, RP, RU, RZ format edit descriptors New Fortran features: UNROLL_AND_JAM and NOUNROLL_AND_JAM directives VECTOR NONTEMPORAL directive now allows variables to be specified VECTOR TEMPORAL directive New C/C++ features: Additional features from C++ 0x C++ lambda functions Decimal floating point valarray implementation using IPP option pragma vector_nontemporal pragma unroll_and_jam 054) 17/12/08 Intel Compilers updated The latest versions of ifort and icc (10.1.021) have been installed. If you get errors about module conflicts when opening new terminals, please log off and log back in again. What's happening is that your desktop has the old versions as the default which conflict with the new ones that the terminal is trying to load. A fresh login will pick up the new default. 053) 04/12/08 Mathematica 7.0 installed module add mathematica/7.0 to use it. 052) 01/12/08 Firefox and patches We need to install some security patches on the workstations including one for Firefox which is known to make running Firefoxes restart. We will therefore do the patching after hours, starting from 9pm tonight. Please shut down Firefox before you leave tonight. If you forget and leave it running you can safely use it the next day but you will get a message saying 'your last Firefox session crashed, restore or start a new session?' It is safe to pick restore. Firefox will then load the tabs you had open when it exited. 051) 27/11/08 PGI 8.0 installed This is a new major release of PGI. It changes quite a lot of things. It is therefore NOT the default. In order to use it you will need to module rm pgi and then either module add pgi/64/8.0/1 or module add /pgi/32/8.0/1 depending on whether you want the 32 or 64-bit versions. I strongly advise you to read the release notes which may be found at /usr/local/shared/suse-10.3/x86_64/pgi/linux86-64/8.0-1/doc on all the workstations. Watch out for the fact that unknown compiler flags are now errors rather than warnings. 050) 03/10/08 Workstations patched today If you find any apps misbehaving please restart them. Firefox was patched, so it is possible that it may crash if you had it running when the patch was applied. It is stable after a restart. 049) 23/09/08 Intel compiler updated The latest versions of ifort and icc (10.1.018) have been installed. If you get errors about module conflicts when opening new terminals, please log off and log back in again. What's happening is that your desktop has the old versions as the default which conflict with the new ones that the terminal is trying to load. A fresh login will pick up the new default. 048) 23/09/08 Workstations patched today If you find any apps misbehaving please restart them. There was no Firefox patch this time. 047) 15/09/08 OpenMPI 1.2.7 for PGI compilers installed OpenMPI 1.2.7 is a bugfix release. We did not have an OpenMPI for PGI on the 10.3 image before. This one was compiled with PGI 7.2-2. 046) 29/08/08 GNU Scientific Library installed This is a numerical library for C programmers. To use it, load the appropriate gsl module. 045) 29/08/08 Gaussian 03 E01 installed Load the gaussian/03-E01 module to use it. It is only available on 64-bit machines. You must be a member of the Gaussian group to use the software. Only students and staff can be members- unfortunately our licence does not cover academic visitors. 044) 28/08/08 Workstations patched today This included a Firefox patch, so if your Firefox crashes this probably means that the patch was applied while there was a copy of Firefox running. It should run normally after it is restarted. 043) 30/07/08 Meld installed This is a graphical diff and merge tool. 042) 28/07/08 SciPy installed module load python-extras Please note that the SciPy install has not passed its internal test suite. We have reduced the errors as far as we believe reasonably possible, but caveat emptor. Interestingly some semi-official RPMs we have of SciPy fail in the same way as our home grown version. 041) 23/07/08 PGI 7.7-2 installed The 7.2 branch of the PGI compilers has been installed on the workstations and is available through the modules system. 040) 23/07/08 Pathscale 3.2 compilers installed We have installed the 3.2 release of the Pathscale compiler suite. Load the appropriate module to use it. We only have one licence for Pathscale so if you get licence errors it's quite likely someone else is using it; wait ten minutes and try again. 039) 21/07/08 ACML 4.1 installed We have installed only the 64-bit library with 32-bit integer types. It is installed for Intel, Pathscale, NAG, and GNU compiler families. Portland comes with a version of the ACML built in so we have not installed a separate version. Load the appropriate module to use it. Note that the NAG version doesn't come in the multiprocessor form. 038) 21/07/08 Changes to g95 modules We have a g95 module which claims its version number is 0.91. I have changed the actual compiler this module points to. The history behind this is that g95 is a rapidly moving target and doesn't regularly release anything but a daily snapshot. The project released 'stable version 0.9' in 2006 which I installed as version 0.9, but come 2008 we wanted a newer version although there had been no new stable release. In January 2008 I therefore took the latest snapshot and installed it as version 0.91. As you have probably guessed, the g95 project released something called 'stable version 0.91' a few months later. To try to keep things sane I've simply replaced the January 2008 snapshot with the real 0.91 release. If anyone encounters weirdness with g95 please speak to the COs. The old '0.91' compiler is still on the NFS server in a directory called 0.905. 037) 11/07/08 Minor change to gaussian module The gaussian module has been changed so that it is visible to all user accounts but produces an error if loaded by an account that is not in group 'gaussian'. This gets rid of an annoying error message from the modules system. 036) 07/07/08 Alpine mail client now available module load alpine "Alpine is a fast, easy to use email client that is suitable for both the inexperienced email user as well as for the most demanding of power users. Alpine is based on the Pine Message System, which was also developed at the University of Washington. Alpine can be learned by exploration and the use of context-sensitive help. The user experience is highly customizable through the use of the Alpine Setup command." I have installed it for the 10.3 image but as it also works on 10.2 I've made it generally available. It's like pine but handles 8-bit characters, amongst other things. 035) 03/07/08 Intel ifort, icc 10.1.017 and MKL 10.0.3.020 installed on workstations These new versions of compilers and the MKL library have been installed and are available through the modules system as normal. More information can be found in /usr/local/shared/intel/cc/10.1.017/doc, and /usr/local/shared/intel/mkl/10.0.3.020/doc . The MKL upgrade release notes mentions some bug fixes and performace improvements. 034) 24/06/08 Mathematica 6.0.3 installed on workstations This is available as the module mathematica/6.0.3 . It is a bugfix release. 033) 25/04/08 Mathematica 6.0.2 installed on workstations This is available as the module mathematica/6.0.2 . 032) 24/04/08 Intel MKL 10.0.2.018 installed This version of the Intel MKL has some performance enhancements over 10.0.1 and provides some new memory management functions. Documentation is in /usr/local/shared/intel/mkl/10.0.2.018/doc . 031) 23/04/08 Intel ifort and icc 10.1.015 installed These are bugfix releases of the 10.1 compilers. One significant thing mentioned in the release notes is a warning that in some near future release of these compilers the 32-bit default will be to produce code that will only run on the P4 and above. 030) 17/04/08 Pathscale 3.1 installed on 10.2 workstations This version fixes the problem with -Ofast, amongst others. 029) 26/03/08 64-bit Intel MKL 10.0 installed on 10.2 workstations module add mkl/{32,64}/10.0 to use it. Intel have cleared up a lot of the versioning confusion in release 9.1. 028) 26/03/08 NAG compilers tweaked to set binary RUNPATH This means that if you use a library module the nag compiler will produce binaries that find this library at runtime. 027) 26/03/08 PGI 7.1-6 installed on 10.2 workstations This is a bugfix release. 026) 07/02/08 Cambridge Structural Database installed module add csd 025) 18/12/07 Intel MKL 10.0 installed module add mkl/32/10.0