Followup Drone Questions: Swarm Program Version and output control

[Paul Johnson]

OK, so I'm starting to find my way around Drone and to make it work with
Swarm.  But I've run into more little problems and figure someone might
help me out.  These things are just very hard to diagnose, I think.  I
have found, I believe, that by replacing -D in the ctrl file with --, I
can pass any long form swarm argument to my program.  Thanks to Ted for
that hint.

Recall I want to make a simple example, with a program that responds to
a command like "./protest --numppl=44". The program outputs a few lines
of data in ascii form and some pixmaps.  I want to sweep over the
parameter numppl.

I'd like to stop Drone from trying to pass in all that other stuff--the
Run number, Random seed, and so forth.  Possible? 

 Here are the details:

Problem 1: Trying to make Drone forget about the program version.
Anyway, I've succeeded so far in getting drone to run the simulation one
time, but it always crashes before it tries a second time. The error
messages center on Version numbering and local commands. My program is
called "protest". When I do "protest -V", I get:

protest [no application version] (Swarm 1.4.1)
 
I haven't succeeded in using the setVersion method in Arguments to
change this, don't even know if it is meant for that.  

Drone by default wants to check the version of the program. The weird
thing is that the simulation runs once or twice, then crashes saying:

GetProgramVersion: Error parsing program version.

(The when it runs, however, the program ignores the input line
parameters.)

That happens when I let the default settings be.

If I reset the drone control file to try to make it ignore the version,
I get this other error

Reading control file...
Initializing...
Running...

DoLocalCmd: child process exited abnormally

This happens when my control file looks like this (here are the top
sections)

#
# This section sets Drone's parameters

# These parameters MUST be set up by the user

param rootDir = /swarm/test/trashdrone
param programDir = /swarm/ContagiousProtest/CP-990628
param programName = protest

# Frequently set parameters
param numRuns = 2
param emailAddr = address@hidden
param experimentSeed =
param useLocalHost = 1
param programVersion =

param getProgramVersion = 0
param versionOptions = -V
param makeInputFile = 1
param inputFileOption = -I
param runSeedOption = -S
param runNumOption = -N
param runNumPrefix = run 
param setParamOption = --
param miscOptions = -s

# Pathnames
param seriesLogDir = $rootDir/examples/stublet/seriesLogDir
param seriesLogFile = drone.log
param outputControlDir = $rootDir/examples/stublet/controlDir
param outputControlFile = 
param outputLogDir = $rootDir/examples/stublet/outputLogDir
param outputLogFile = 
param hostDir = $rootDir/examples/stublet
param hostFile = stublet.hosts
param experimentDir = $rootDir/examples/stublet/experimentDir
param experimentName = 


What do you think is up with this?


Problem 2: output control.  Suppose a Swarm program is written to output
pixmap screenshots. I think by default it uses the current directory. 
If I run a sum under Drone, does it automatically save them in the
output directory that I specify? Or am I supposed to do something in the
Swarm program to tell them to write in the experiment directory? 

-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700

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