Lighthouse is a framework for creating, maintaining, and using a taxonomy of available software that can be used to build highly-optimized matrix algebra computations. The taxonomy provides an organized anthology of software components and programming tools needed for that task. The taxonomy will serve as a guide to practitioners seeking to learn what is available for their programming tasks, how to use it, and how the various parts fit together. It builds upon and improves existing collections of numerical software, adding tools for the tuning of matrix algebra computations.
The development version of Lighthouse can be accessed here. If you would like to check out the code and run it on Linux or Mac OS X 10.6 or later, refer to the [Getting Started] page.
Acknowledgment: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0916474 and 1219089.
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This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) grants (award numbers CCF-0916474 and CCF-1219089).
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Lighthouse: A User-Centered Web Service for Linear Algebra Software Boyana Norris, Sa-Lin Bernstein, Ramya Nair, Elizabeth Jessup Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software (JSS): Special Issue on Software Engineering for Parallel Systems, to appear (2015)
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Generating Customized Sparse Eigenvalue Solutions with Lighthouse Ramya Nair, Sa-Lin Bernstein, Elizabeth Jessup, Boyana Norris Proceedings of the Ninth International Multi-Conference on Computing in the Global Information Technology June 22 - 17, 2014, Seville, Spain, (2014)
The goal of the Lighthouse framework is to assist scientists, engineers, and students with the implementation of the matrix algebra computations that dominate many high-performance applications. Like a lighthouse that illuminates a dark sea and guides ships, Lighthouse will guide the practitioners through the stormy seas of numerical software development. Lighthouse was inspired by the LAPACK Search Engine and two usability studies of later search prototypes. Lighthouse is the first framework that attempts to combine a matrix algebra software ontology with code generation and tuning capabilities. It contains a taxonomy that will provide all of the software needed to take a matrix algebra problem from algorithm description to a high-performance implementation. Moreover, Lighthouse offers different levels of interfaces to assist users of different backgrounds to exploit the numerical software and the different code generation and tuning tools included in the taxonomy.
If you are running Mac OS X 10.6 or later, or Linux, you can get the Lighthouse server running locally with relatively little effort. Note that because we make the database setup as trivial as possible, this will run much slower than production servers based on mysql do.
1. Download and install DjangoStack, version 1.4.12.
- On Linux, djangostack suggests installing in
/optif you execute the installer as root. For our purposes, you should execute the installer as a normal user and install to your home directory, as root privileges will complicate things later on. - For database choices, only install MySQL.
- If there is an error related to using MySQL (port in use, for example), you may change the port number. This change should eventually be reflected in our project source tree at
src/Dlighthouse/settings.py - When you set up database passwords for djangostack, use
yellow1234.
The following steps all take place on the command line of a Terminal window.
Djangostack is a compatible set of server, database, and scripting applications (mysql, apache, python, etc) that are installed and used separately from any existing versions on your host system. It is imperative these are used when you work on the command line with Lighthouse software. Before setting up Lighthouse according to the steps below -- and before running it in typical usage -- you must run the following two commands:
user@localhost:~/djangostack-1.4-xx $ ./use_djangostack
This script ensures that djangostack's executable paths to python et al. are selected in your shell environment, and launches a new bash shell under that environment.
The above command doesn't actually start the services provided by djangostack. For that, run:
user@localhost:~/djangostack-1.4-xx $ ./ctlscript.sh start
(./ctlscript.sh help for more information.) The script starts the services in the background and returns you to the shell when ready.
You will need to create the mysql database and a user for it before installing Lighthouse. After starting services as described above, run mysql using the 'root' user and password assigned during djangostack installation (yellow1234):
$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
...
mysql> create database lighthousedb;
Next, create the appropriate user name (lighthouse) for accessing the DB (lighthousedb), assign permissions, and exit:
mysql> CREATE USER 'lighthouse'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'yellow1234';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'lighthouse'@'localhost';
mysql> exit;
Restart djangostack services in order to get MySQL changes working. cd to the djangostack directory and run
./ctlscript.sh restart
Clone or download Lighthouse. First, cd to your preferred directory for storing the lighthouse source tree.
git clone https://github.com/LighthouseHPC/lighthouse.git
Then change to it:
cd lighthouse
Bootstrap required python modules and update the database (only once, no need to do again)
On Mac:
./scripts/bootstrap.sh
On Linux:
./scripts/bootstrap-new.sh
This may ask you for your superuser password on the Mac because it's adding packages to the djangostack python installation (root password should not be required on Linux since it is installed under your home directory). If bootstrap doesn't work, you can install the required packages manually, e.g.,
easy_install whoosh==2.5.5
easy_install django-haystack==2.1
easy_install django_dajaxice
easy_install django_dajax
easy_install django_taggit
easy_install django-extensions
You will then see information about seeding the database when the bootstrap script finishes.
Seed the DB by running from src/Dlighthouse (remember to be under the djangostack environment by running use_djangostack as described above)
user@localhost:~/lighthouse/src/Dlighthouse$ python manage.py syncdb
Change to src/Dlighthouse/lighthouse/database/lapack_le/databaseMng and run
user@localhost:~/lighthouse/src/Dlighthouse/lighthouse/database/lapack_le/databaseMng$ python databaseLoad.py
You will need to do the same for each appropriate directory under
lighthouse/src/Dlighthouse/lighthouse/database/, i.e., lapack_svd, slepc_eprob, etc as required.
Similarly you can change to lighthouse/src/Dlighthouse/lighthouse/database/dataLoad/lapack and run
user@localhost:~/lighthouse/src/Dlighthouse/lighthouse/database/dataLoad/lapack$ python databaseLoad.py
to load all of the LAPACK data if necessary.
If you haven't started the djangostack services as described above, please do so before running Lighthouse (Cf. supra steps 2, 3).
To run, in lighthouse-taxonomy, do:
./scripts/run-lighthouse-new.sh
The script chooses a default port number (e.g., 8000 or 8080). You can use a different one, e.g., 8086, if you wish by supplying it:
./scripts/run-lighthouse-new.sh 8086
This HTTP server runs in the foreground of your shell and writes a log to the terminal.
Next, open a browser and type the URL below in the address bar of the browser (if you use a different port number other than 8000, specify the number in the URL)
http://127.0.0.1:8000/index/
If you see a generic Bitnami Djangostack webpage here (which usually serves on 8080), then there is a port number conflict. Restart lighthouse server with a different port number.
Have fun!
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Copyright (c) 2015 University of Oregon and University of Colorado Boulder
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