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Troubleshooting and FAQ

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Johannes Hofmann edited this page Apr 18, 2026 · 2 revisions

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Common issues and their solutions.

Build Issues

"Environment variable ALF_FC not set"

You forgot to source configure.sh before running make.

source configure.sh GNU noMPI    # or your desired configuration
make

"Compiler 'xyz' does not exist"

The compiler set by configure.sh is not installed or not in your PATH. Install the compiler or load the appropriate module on your cluster.

"Linear algebra libraries not found"

LAPACK/BLAS are not installed or not found by the compiler.

  • macOS: brew install lapack openblas
  • Linux: sudo apt install liblapack-dev libblas-dev
  • Cluster: Load the MKL module (e.g., module load mkl)

HDF5 download fails

The auto-download requires curl or wget and internet access. On compute nodes without internet, build HDF5 on a login node first:

source configure.sh GNU noMPI HDF5    # downloads and builds HDF5

Then use the same configure.sh invocation on compute nodes — the library will already be present.

"HDF5 installed without compression capabilities"

The HDF5 build did not find zlib. Output will work but files won't be compressed. Install zlib development headers and rebuild HDF5:

  • macOS: brew install zlib
  • Linux: sudo apt install zlib1g-dev

Then delete the HDF5 directory for your compiler in ALF/HDF5/ and re-run configure.sh with HDF5.

Runtime Issues

"Try with smaller Nwrap or dtau"

The Green's function deviation exceeds the internal threshold (10). This indicates numerical instability. Fixes:

  1. Reduce Nwrap — stabilize more frequently (e.g., from 10 to 5)
  2. Reduce Dtau — finer imaginary-time discretization
  3. Try a different stabilization scheme — LOG mode extends accessible parameter ranges

See Stabilization Parameters for details.

NaN or Inf in output

Usually a sign of severe numerical instability. Check:

  • Is Dtau too large for the interaction strength?
  • Is Nwrap too large?
  • Are physical parameters reasonable (e.g., ham_U not astronomically large)?

Simulation runs but results look wrong

  • Check the info file. Look at acceptance rates — very low acceptance (<10%) means the Markov chain is stuck.
  • Check precision. The info file reports the precision of the Green's function. Large values indicate numerical problems.
  • Validate against known results. Run a small system where exact diagonalization results are available.

Simulation is very slow

  • MPI scales with bins. Using more MPI ranks than NBin wastes resources.
  • OpenMP scaling. ALF uses OpenMP for linear algebra. Beyond 4–6 threads, returns diminish.
  • Checkerboard decomposition. If applicable for your model, Checkerboard = .T. can significantly reduce the cost per sweep.

Analysis Issues

"confout" and "confout.h5" both exist

The out_to_in.sh script refuses to run if both HDF5 and plain-text configuration files coexist in the same directory. Remove the one that doesn't match your build.

Missing h5py or f90nml for convert_bins.py

pip3 install h5py f90nml

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I restart a simulation?

Run out_to_in.sh (or out_to_in_temper.sh for tempering) to rename output configurations to input configurations, then relaunch. ALF automatically detects confin_* files and resumes.

Can I change parameters between restarts?

Only parameters that don't affect the configuration format (e.g., NSweep, NBin). Changing Dtau, Beta, lattice size, or the model requires starting from scratch.

How many bins/sweeps do I need?

  • NBin ≥ 20 for reliable Jackknife error estimates.
  • NSweep should be large enough that consecutive bins are uncorrelated. Check by increasing N_rebin in &VAR_errors — if errors grow with rebinning, bins are correlated and NSweep should be increased.

What is the sign problem?

Some models (e.g., frustrated systems, finite-density fermions) have a fluctuating sign of the fermion determinant, causing exponentially growing statistical errors. ALF reports the average sign in the info file. If it's much less than 1, the sign problem is severe and results at that parameter point may be unreliable.

Where can I get help?

ALF Repository · Documentation (PDF) · pyALF · Discord · Contact: alf@physik.uni-wuerzburg.de

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