PVM Scilab-4.1.2 Solved problem pvm_send pvm_recv DEBIAN CASE

[pm]

I solved my problem.  It involved recognizing a number of changes that 
occurred at the time Scilab-4 was released.  These include transitions from 
g77 to gfortran, and transitions from 32bit to 64 bit.  Running on a cluster, 
Scilab 4.0 turns out to be a good solution (one generally runs in "nw" no 
window mode, and many of the GUI improvements of version 5 don't matter). 
Also, Scilab-4.0 executes faster than Scilab-5.x in some situations.

SOLUTION:
  The Scilab bugzilla had a bug report that was on point.  In the upgrade from 
version 4.0 to 4.1.x, a bug was introduced to file:
 "scilab-4.0/routines/pvm/intpvm.c"
The discussion was a bit confusing, but it appears that the bug may have been 
fixed in versions 5.x (I have not explored that speculation)

In any case, down grading to Scilab-4.0 solved my problem for 32 bit machines.  
For 64bit platforms, there was an additional problem with the configure 
script recognizing the gfortran compiler.  For the Debian Lenny OS, this 
appears to have also been repaired in Debian source packages downloaded from:

http://www.securehost.com/mirror/debian/pool/non-free/s/scilab/

These are the ones that worked
scilab_4.0-12.diff.gz
scilab_4.0-12.dsc
scilab_4.0.orig.tar.gz

The only change needed was to edit the g77 dependencies to read gfortran in 
the debian/control file.  This is because Scilab-4.0 packages were designed 
for Debian Etch (version just before Lenny).

On CentOS, the scilab-4.0-src.tar.gz file compiles OK if you are running 32 
bit (we use CentOS on our Beowulf cluster).  The compile used the following 
configure command:

 ./configure --with-gnu --with-pvm-library=/usr/share/pvm3/lib/LINUXI386/ \
 --with-pvm-include=/usr/share/pvm3/include

RECOMMENDATION:
If you are running older hardware on a cluster, consider Scilab-4.0 if you 
want to be able to send messages between nodes.  Also, build it from source.

-- 
Dr. Paul Michaels, PE
Professor, Engineering Geophysics
http://cgiss.boisestate.edu/~pm