Installing PVM

The best way to install PVM is to get a nice system administrator do it for you. This saves you some work and makes it possible for other people on your system to use PVM.
However if you are the nice system administrator, your system administrator is not nice or you can't find him because he is on his well earned vacation in the Carribean, then here are the things you have to do.

Step 1: Download the software package

You can download the software for PVM from the Netlib archives at http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/ and you probably want to get a copy of xpvm from http://www.netlib.org/pvm3/xpvm/.

Step 2: Find a home for PVM

If you install PVM as a system administrator then /usr/local/pvm3 seems a natural choice. Otherwise create a directory pvm3 in your home directory and put the downloaded software in there.

Step 3: Build PVM

Unpack the software package.
PVM is distributed packed and compressed into different formats, specified by extensions attached to the file name. If your file name is pvm3.3.10.tar.gz then you have to do the following:
- gunzip pvm3.3.10.tar.gz
- tar -xvf pvm3.3.10.tar
Set the environment variable PVM_ROOT to the directory where you put the PVM software by adding:
- setenv PVM_ROOT $HOME/pvm3 or setenv PVM_ROOT /usr/local/pvm3 to your .cshrc file if you use csh
- PVM_ROOT=$HOME/pvm3
  PVM_DPATH=$PVM_ROOT/lib/pvmd
  export PVM_ROOT PVM_DPATH
  or
  PVM_ROOT=/usr/local/pvm3
  PVM_DPATH=$PVM_ROOT/lib/pvmd
  export PVM_ROOT PVM_DPATH
  to your .profile file if you use sh or ksh
Type make in the PVM_ROOT directory
This will build the libraries and binaries required to run PVM and if everything compiles right you are ready to go.

Step 4: Move files

If you have root access, then you should copy the PVM libraries (libfpvm3.a, libgpvm3.a, libpvm3.a) from pvm3/lib/$PVM_ARCH into /usr/lib where the compiler can find them. For thwe same reason put the include files (fpvm3.h, pvm3.h, pvmsdpro.h, pvmtev.h) into /usr/include.

Back: Configuring PVM