Launch Intel debugger (idb) in parallel mode with MPICH and input parameters file

Question

I would like to launch Intel debugger idb in parallel mode with MPICH mpiexec and an input parameters textfile required by the program executable.

Launching program in normal production mode:

mpiexec -np 4 prog -f params.in

where prog is the name of the executable -f is a switch understood by the program and params.in is the name of the input parameters file.

My best take so far is:

mpiexec -np 4 xterm -e idb prog

This works without the input parameters file, but as soon as I supply the parameters as:

mpiexec -np 4 xterm -e idb prog -f params.in

Intel debugger breaks with the following fatal error

Error: ambiguous option: 'f', variants are: freshlyExceded fullname

Running in the standard way previously supported by mpirun of MPICH is not working either:

mpirun -dbg=idb -np N [other mpich options] \
application [application arguments] [-idb idb options]

Neither mpirun nor mpiexec do not accept the -gdb switch.

Intel debugger version 13.0, Build [80.483.23]

MPICH version 3.2b3

Source code is written in Fortran 90

Answer 1

You've got the crux of the issue: how do you tell a debugger that the command line arguments are for the program, not for the debugger.

For gcc, the --args argument is how you do this:

$ mpiexec -np 4 xterm -e cgdb --args ./atomicity -fname blah

For icc, it does not look like there is an exact equivalent. In that case (and this works for gdb, too), command line arguments can be given as part of the 'run' command:

(gdb) r -fname blah

this is documented in the "Intel(R) Debugger (IDB) Manual" (https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/m/8/4/c/5/7/6364-idb_manual.pdf)