I've seen this error on machines where the filesystem was having issues, specifically on the home filesystem on NERSC's hopper machine.
The problem was that try_compile was generating an empty testCCompiler.c --
have you looked at the size of this file in your build output?
The root cause of the problem was that ostream::operator<< was generating
calls to fwrite with more than 1023 bytes, but for whatever reason the
filesystem was failing to execute that call. Running strace on CMake showed
the buggy call -- I'm attaching the C++ and CMake reproducers I made for
NERSC's system. You can run the cmake one with cmake -E, and you'll need to
compile th C++ one. Strace them and see if you can see the problem I'm
describing. Or try building in a different filesystem and see if the
problem persists.
You may actually have a different problem, but the output you're reporting
looks awfully familiar to me. I don't think it's easy build's fault.
-Todd
Here's a more detailed description of the problem that I sent to the PETSc
developers a few weeks ago:
Hi guys,
After playing around with this, the problem is the C++ implementation on
hopper. Something is screwy with fstream it can¹t write chunks larger
than 1023 bytes. Attached are two reproducers for your support request.
One reproduces the problem in CMake; one reproduces it in C++.
If you dig in the CMakeFiles directory, you¹ll see that the C file used to
do the compiler identification is actually 0 bytes, which is what gets you
the undefined reference to main in your error log, causing the compiler
test to fail:
$ l CMakeFiles/2.8.11.1/CompilerIdC/CMakeCCompilerId.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 tgamblin tgamblin 0 Sep 30 21:34
CMakeFiles/2.8.11.1/CompilerIdC/CMakeCCompilerId.c
I figured something was wrong with the CMake after the OS upgrade Mark
mentioned, and I tried to build a fresh one, but that gave the same error
*in the bootstrap script* I couldn¹t even build cmake.
If you dig around to the spot in CMake where it generates the files to use
for compiler testing, you find that CMake reads a file into a variable,
filters it, and writes it out. Printing the variable using message() pre-
and post-filtering works fine. But writing the variable still gets you a
0 byte file.
Making a simple reproducer that writes a small string succeeds. If,
however, you make a string > 1024 bytes, you get zero-byte output. Test
that by running my file:
cmake -P test.cmake
If you strace that, you notice this:
$ strace cmake -P test.cmake
[ snip ]
writev(3, [{NULL, 0}, {"01234567890123456789012345678901"..., 1024}], 2)
= -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
Smaller messages use a write() and not a writev(), so they succeed. But
that¹s not cmake¹s fault. ofstream does that. If you run the attached
C++ program, which uses ofstream to write a 1024-byte string, it fails
too. Take one character off the string and it works.
So, something is botched with Hopper¹s C++ libs, or maybe with writev. I
imagine that more than CMake is broken, at least on the front-end nodes.
I don¹t know of many programs that write large chunks to ofstreams, so
maybe all is not lost.
Still makes me suspicious of the hopper machine.
-Todd
From: Backeljauw Franky <[email protected]>
Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
List-Post: [email protected]
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 2:56 AM
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [easybuild] CMake-3.3.0-intel-2014b : problem building
> Hello all,
>
> We have great difficulty in installing CMake on RHEL 6.4. We have tried both
> with CMake-2.8.12.1-intel-2014a.eb and CMake-3.3.0-intel-2014b.eb which is
> included in EasyBuild 1.15.2. The same problem occurs with the foss-toolchains
> as well as with (e.g.) CMake-2.8.12.1-GCC-4.8.2.eb.
>
> We get the following errors:
>
>> -- The C compiler identification is unknown
>> CMake Error at Modules/CMakeDetermineCCompiler.cmake:170 (configure_file):
>> configure_file Problem configuring file
>> Call Stack (most recent call first):
>> CMakeLists.txt:16 (project)
>>
>>
>> -- The CXX compiler identification is unknown
>> CMake Error at Modules/CMakeDetermineCXXCompiler.cmake:168 (configure_file):
>> configure_file Problem configuring file
>> Call Stack (most recent call first):
>> CMakeLists.txt:16 (project)
>>
>>
>> -- Check for working C compiler:
>> /apps/antwerpen/ivybridge/sl6/icc/2013.5.192-GCC-4.8.3/bin/intel64/icc
>> CMake Error at Modules/CMakeTestCCompiler.cmake:47 (try_compile):
>> Unknown extension ".c" for file
>>
>>
>> /apps/antwerpen/easybuild/build/CMake/3.0.0/intel-2014b/cmake-3.0.0/CMakeFile
>> s/CMakeTmp/testCCompiler.c
>>
>> try_compile() works only for enabled languages. Currently these are:
>>
>> C CXX
>>
> I have included the full log for the CMake-3.0.0 build (cmake.log).
>
> I hope someone can help us out here.
>
> -- Many thanks for your reply,
>
> Franky Backeljauw
test.cmake
Description: Binary data
test.C
Description: Binary data
