Author: J. Ghattas, N. Vuichard
First edition: 2024/02/12

Some classic set up problems when new on a cluster

If error while compiling XIOS or problems with perl

If your compilation fails in XIOS, it might be due to a bad initalization of perl. perl is used by fcm, which is used by the compilation script. To know if perl is the problem, type in your terminal at the cluster: perl -v. If this command gives you an error message, please follow the instructions below. This problem has been seen while connecting from a MAC to the obelix or spirt clusters. Example of error message:

> perl -v

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
    LANGUAGE = (unset),
    LC_ALL = (unset),
    LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
    LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 3 (v5.16.3) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi
...

To solve this issue, you need to configure the preferences in your local terminal on your MAC to make sure that the option 'Set local environment variables on startup' is unchecked. See also attached file to help. This is to be done before connecting via ssh to the cluster.