[CentOS] Updating gfortran in CentOS 5.4?

Wed Feb 3 17:25:00 UTC 2010
Jon Forrest <jlforrest at berkeley.edu>

We're finding that several of the packages we
need don't compile using the version 4.1.2 of
gfortran that comes with CentOS 5.4. So,
I've built the latest version of gfortran (e.g. 4.4.2)
but I've done it so that all the new version's
files go in /share/apps/gnu so that they
don't interfere with the standard gcc distribution
(building gfortran requires building some parts
of gcc).

Although I can compile and run a simple fortran
"Hello, world" program using the version of
gfortran I built this way, trying to run a
more complex application, such as charmm (a molecular
dynamics program), fails. When I run charmm, I get the
message "Killed".

Running strace ./charmm shows

   execve("./charmm", ["./charmm"], [/* 43 vars */] <unfinished ...>
   +++ killed by SIGKILL

Since "Hello, world" compiles and runs, but charmm
compiles and doesn't run, there's something wrong
with how charmm is linked. Also, although the
'file charmm' command shows an ELF 64-bit dynamically
linked file, 'ldd charmm' says "   not a dynamic executable"
(note no file name). So, something is strange.

What have other people done about building new versions
of gfortran on CentOS 5.4? Is this worth the trouble?
Or, is it better to just go with Intel Fortran?

Cordially,
-- 
Jon Forrest
Research Computing Support
College of Chemistry
173 Tan Hall
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
94720-1460
510-643-1032
jlforrest at berkeley.edu