Scientific Computing

WSL2 date time skew error

WSL2 (including with Windows 20H1 2004) is known to have issues with having the WSL clock get hours or days behind actual time after the computer is suspended. This issue was not seen in WSL1, but upon upgrading to WSL2 has been almost immediately apparent to multiple people that reported this issue. This causes errors with build systems (including GNU Make and Ninja) and SSL verification among others.

A workaround for this, when it occurs (have to keep doing workaround) is to synchronize the software clock to the onboard hardware clock from WSL Terminal:

hwclock -s

or if suitable from Windows Terminal:

wsl --shutdown

If that doesn’t work, try using NTP from WSL Terminal:

ntpdate time.windows.com

This issue has been noted at WSL GitHub Issues:

Other issues are linked from those

Fix BibTeX error with .bbl file

Sometimes cryptic errors occur if there was a syntax error in a .bib BibTeX bibliography file that doesn’t disappear even when the .bib syntax is corrected. The fix for this is often to delete the auto-generated files:

Example: top-level LaTeX file “main.tex”. The compilation generates main.bbl and main.aux among several others. Try:

rm main.aux main.bbl

pdflatex main
bibtex main
pdflatex main
pdflatex main

Delete Git tag / release version

Deleting or updating a GitHub or GitLab release leaves the Git tag, which must also be deleted to reissue a corrected release.

  1. delete the Git tag locally. Here we assume the release tag was v1.2.3

    git tag -d v1.2.3
  2. delete the Git tag on remote site

    git push -d origin v1.2.3

    This puts the release notes from v1.2.3 into “draft” mode–hidden from the public.

  3. Make the necessary changes, then do the release again, reusing the draft release notes.

Each Git hosting service has distinct approaches to releases and tags:

Python zipfile recursive write

This function recursively zips files in directories, storing only the relative path due to the use of the “arcname” parameter. Otherwise, you get the path relative to the root of your filesystem, which is rarely useful.

import zipfile
from pathlib import Path


def zip_dirs(path: Path, pattern: str) -> T.List[Path]:
    """
    recursively .zip a directory
    """

    path = Path(path).expanduser().resolve()

    dlist = [d for d in path.glob(pattern) if d.is_dir()]
    if len(dlist) == 0:
        raise FileNotFoundError(f"no directories to zip under {path} with {pattern}")

    for d in dlist:
        zip_name = d.with_suffix(".zip")
        with zipfile.ZipFile(zip_name, mode="w", compression=zipfile.ZIP_LZMA) as z:
            for root, _, files in os.walk(d):
                for file in files:
                    fn = Path(root, file)
                    afn = fn.relative_to(path)
                    z.write(fn, arcname=afn)
        print("write", zip_name)

Matlab parfor parallel plotting

Matlab plotting can be quite slow, as can Python Matplotlib plotting. Sometimes, Matlab parfor can be used to plot in parallel, when all parfor restrictions are met. However, parallel plotting in Matlab doesn’t always work, or may work on some operating systems but not others. So use great caution if making a “parfor” plotting loop–it may not work for others.

Problems when trying to do relatively simple plots in parallel:

Warning: A worker aborted during execution of the parfor loop. The parfor loop will now run again
on the remaining workers.
Error using distcomp.remoteparfor/rebuildParforController (line 194)
All workers aborted during execution of the parfor loop.
Warning: worker(s) crashed while executing code in the current parallel pool. MATLAB may attempt
to run the code again on the remaining workers of the pool, unless an spmd block has run. View the
crash dump files to determine what caused the workers to crash.

Change file ownership

When desired and permitted by the computer filesystem, it’s possible to change file ownership. This may be necessary when a file was inadvertently created with root / admin ownership by mistake, and it’s necessary for a general user to edit or access the file. Changing file ownership can have unexpected consequences, like removing the ability of others to access the file or run a program depending on the file. Therefore, file ownership changes should be done only when necessary and with consideration for others who may depend on the file.

These examples assume the file “example.txt” is in the current directory and the user logged in should own the file. These tasks are similarly done in other languages such as Go or Julia.

As long as the user has filesystem permission, Python can easily change file ownership across operating systems.

import shutil
import getpass

shutil.chown("example.txt", user=getpass.getuser())

On Windows check ownership of the file by Command Prompt:

dir /q example.txt

or PowerShell:

(get-acl example.txt).owner

Windows uses the takeown command to change file ownership. For simplicity we assume the desired user is logged in and executing the command.

takeown /f example.txt

On macOS / Linux check ownership of the file by

ls -l example.txt

For simplicity we assume the desired user is logged in and executing the command chown:

chown $whoami:$whoami example.txt

Fix Python segmentation fault on exit

The “python_history” file contains recent commands entered into the Python interpreter. “python_history” files with incorrect permissions can cause a message on exiting Python like:

Error in atexit._run_exitfuncs:
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

Find the owner of ~/.python_history

  • macOS / Linux: ls -l ~/.python_history
  • Windows / PowerShell: (get-acl ~/.python_history).owner

If it does not show the current username, that’s likely the problem.

Fix

This changes the file ownership to the current user.

  • macOS / Linux: chown $whoami:$whoami ~/.python_history
  • Windows PowerShell: takeown /f $home\.python_history

Notes

Git rewrite commit email addresses

git-filter-repo is a Python program that is generally recommended over Git filter-branch and BFG Repo Cleaner. Other users of your repo will get an “unrelated history” error so they will have to reset or reclone the repo.

Example

Suppose an incorrect email address was used to make previous Git commits. To update Git commit email address history from the Git repo directory:

git filter-repo --mailmap mailmap --force

where file “mailmap” has mailmap file format email addresses to change like:

Jane Doe <jane@new.com> <jane@old.com>
John Smith <john@new.com> <john@old.com>

Pip install develop mode PEP517

PEP517 / PEP518 introduced pyproject.toml as a supplement and even replacement for setup.py. Pyproject.toml has been adopted by major Python projects including PyTest. Some computers, especially those using system Python may be configured without a user site-packages directory. When pyproject.toml is present, systems without a Python user site-packages directory may fail on pip install -e . with errors including:

running develop WARNING: The user site-packages directory is disabled. error: can’t create or remove files in install directory

The fix below will work with or without pyproject.toml, installing just like usual:

  • pip install . → under user site-packages, a static copy of the package (any package code changes require package reinstall)
  • pip install -e . → Python-style link in user site-packages to this code directory (live development code)

Note: some systems require python3 -m pip instead of plain pip.

Fix

A general fix is to make setup.py contain site.ENABLE_USER_SITE = True. If the computer admin has locked down the user directory (very rare) this may still not work.

This installs this package, as well as any prerequisites specified and not already installed under the Python user directory site.USER_SITE.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import site
import setuptools

# PEP517 workaround
site.ENABLE_USER_SITE = True

setuptools.setup()

Notes

  • Pip issue discussing this matter

Resume download with curl or Wget

curl and Wget are popular web interface command line utilities that among their many features can resume interrupted or canceled downloads. curl is a library with a command-line frontend, while Wget is a command line tool.

Daniel Stenberg’s curl has a permissive license that has perhaps led it to become very widespread, installed “from the factory” in operating systems from Windows, macOS, Linux to automobiles and many other embedded systems. curl’s man page is perhaps best used by text search.

curl -O -C - https://mysite.example
-C -
--continue-at - continue a previous transfer, automatically determining byte offset.

A distinct Wget capability is recursive downloads.

wget -C htttps://mysite.example