\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{code}

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\begin{document}
\title{A Name Publishing Interface for MPICH}
\author{William Gropp}
\maketitle

\section{Introduction}

MPI defines a set of routines for exchanging data with other MPI
programs.  The intent of these is to allow MPI applications to 
exchange the data that is needed for the \code{port} argument in the
\code{MPI_Comm_connect} and \code{MPI_Comm_accept} calls.  

\section{The MPI Name Publishing Routines}
MPI provides three routines to allow MPI applications to exchange the
\emph{port names} that are used to connect two running MPI
applications.  These routines are shown below in a modified C binding;
\code{const} is used to indicate input arguments and array notation is
used instead of pointer notation for character strings (this follows
the MPICH coding recommendations).
\begin{verbatim}
MPI_Publish_name( const char service_name[], const MPI_Info info, 
                  const char port_name[] )

MPI_Unpublish_name( const char service_name[], 
                    const MPI_Info info, 
                    const char port_name[] )

MPI_Lookup_name( const char service_name[], const MPI_Info info, 
                 char port_name[MPI_MAX_PORT_NAME] )
\end{verbatim}
In these routines, the \code{port_name} is the name returned by
\code{MPI_Open_port}.  
The \code{service_name} is a name chosen by the
applications as the name that all related applications will use to
look up the \code{port_name}.
The \code{info} argument is used to pass any necessary information to
the name publishing system (the reason for this will become clear in
Section~\ref{sec:sample-impls}). 

\section{Why Another Interface?}
An alternative to developing another interface is to extend the
process management interface (PMI).  An advantage to this is that the
MPI process already has a connection to the outside world, used by the
PMI interface to implement the PMI put/get interface.  Thus, an
extension to the PMI interface could support the name publishing
routines (an extension is needed because the MPI name publishing
routines are independent, not collective).

To see why another interface is needed, consider the situation in
Figure~\ref{fig:multiple-pm}.  In this Figure, two MPI programs, each
started by a different process manager, wish to connect.  For example,
one MPI job may be run on a batch system (the PBS job in this example)
and one on an interactive visualization cluster.

\begin{figure}
\centerline{\includegraphics{twopm.eps}}
\caption{Two MPI applications using name publishing with two different
process managers}\label{fig:multiple-pm}
\end{figure}

To implement this scenario, it is necessary to separate the name
publishing interface from the process management interface.  
Of course, in a scenario in which there are two MPI jobs using the
same process manager, the process manager could provide the name
service.  The proposed interface allows implementations use either a
separate service or the process manager

\section{A Proposed Interface}
\label{sec:name-interface}

The interface described here provides all the services necessary for
implementing the MPI name servie routines.  In order to provide a hook
for the name service implementation to initialize, there are separate
initializating and finalize calls.  These can, for example, open a
connection to a name service.  The initialization call returns a
handle of type \code{MPID_NS_Handle} that is used in all of the other
calls.  As in other MPI calls, the free routine takes a pointer to the
handle so that the handle can be set to null when the free routine
succeeds.  Each of these routines returns either \code{MPI_SUCCESS} or
a valid MPI error code; implementations may either use the MPICH
error code mechanism or, for external packages, use the MPI routines
for adding error codes and classes.

\begin{verbatim}
int MPID_NS_Create( const MPID_Info *, MPID_NS_Handle * )
int MPID_NS_Publish( MPID_NS_Handle, const MPID_Info *, 
                     const char service_name[], const char port[] )
int MPID_NS_Lookup( MPID_NS_Handle, const MPID_Info *,
                    const char service_name[], char port[] )
int MPID_NS_Unpublish( MPID_NS_Handle, const MPID_Info *, 
                       const char service_name[] )
int MPID_NS_Free( MPID_NS_Handle * )
\end{verbatim}

These calls make use of the \code{MPID_Info} pointer (a pointer to the
info object passed into the MPI name publisher routines) to provide other
information that the name service may require.
Predefined \code{MPI_Info} keys and values for name service are:
\begin{description}
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_CONTACT}]Value is a string providing contact
  information for the name service.  This may be an IP address or
  something else (see below).
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_CREDENTIAL}]Value is a string providing
  credentials for accessing the name service.  The exact format is
  specified by the name service.  See also \code{NAMEPUB_USER}.
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_EXPIRE}]Value is an integer, represented as a
  string, that specifies an expiration time in seconds from the time
  that a name is published.
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_IP}]Value is the IP address as a string, usually
  in ``hostname:port'' format.  This is an alternative to
  \code{NAMEPUB_CONTACT}. 
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_IP\_FROM\_ENV}]Value is the name of an environment
  variable whose value has the same meaning as the \code{NAMEPUB_IP}
  info key. 
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_REFCOUNT}]Value is an integer, represented as a
  string, giving the number of times a value can
  be looked up before being deleted from the name service.  Set only
  on \code{MPI_Publish_name}.
\item[\code{NAMEPUB\_USER}]Value is a string giving the user name.
\end{description}
Two of these info parameters make slight changes to the semantics of
the name publishing routines by providing a way to cause names to
expire without an explicit call to \code{MPI_UNPUBLISH_NAME}.
However, the benefit of these in terms of ensuring that the name
service does not become clogged with old names outweighs the MPI
requirement that \code{MPI_Info} parameters make no changes to the
semantics of the routines.  

\section{A Few Possible Implementations}
\label{sec:sample-impls}
This section outlines three possible implementations.

\subsection{LDAP}
\label{sec:namepub-ldap}
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) \cite{ldap} is a
standard for providing general name lookup services.  Open source
implementations of LDAP are available; at many locations, an LDAP
server may already be running.  The following sketches the routines
from OpenLDAP that can be used to implement the name interface.

\begin{description}
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Create}]Use \code{ldap_open} to access the ldap server
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Publish}]Use \code{ldap_add_s} to insert the name
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Lookup}]Use \code{ldap_search_s}, \code{ldap_first_entry}, and
  \code{ldap_get_values} to access the entry
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Unpublish}]Use \code{ldap_modify_s} to remove the name
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Free}]Use \code{ldap_unbind_s} and \code{ldap_memfree}
\end{description}

\subsection{File}
\label{sec:namepub-file}
If all MPI processes share a single filesystem, a simple
implementation of the name service can use the file system.  
In this design, each value is placed into a separate file whose name
include the key; this avoids
any problems with concurrent updates to a single file.
\begin{description}
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Create}]Create a structure to hold the names of all files created.
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Publish}]Create a file using a name containing the user, contact
  string, and the key.  The text of the file is the value of the name.
  Save the file name in the name service structure.  Protection is
  provided by the file system.
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Unpublish}]Unlink (remote) the file; remove the file name from
  the name service structure.
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Lookup}]For the filename using the same rule in publish and read
  the file.
\item[\code{MPID\_NS\_Free}]Remove all of the created files.
\end{description}

Some of the features, such as \code{NAMEPUB_EXPIRE}, are not supported
by this interface.  The info key \code{NAMEPUB_CONTACT} can be used to
specify the directory into which the files will be placed.

\end{document}
