Linux PC

The web site of Axel Kohlmeyer contains a very informative section on compiling and running CPMD on Linux. Most of its contents applies to the Quantum-ESPRESSO code as well:
http://www.theochem.rub.de/~axel.kohlmeyer/cpmd-linux.html.

On newer Linux machines, even statically linked binaries will try to open some shared libraries, which will lead to crashes if libc/libm/libpthreads are not linked dynamically. Machines using glibc-2.2.4 and older seem ok: compile on these machines if you want to share precompiled binaries. Crashes due to multithreading (e.g. when using a multithreaded ATLAS or MKL) on machines with the newer threads (nptl) can be worked around by setting the environment variable LD_ASSUME_KERNEL to '2.2.5'. For the newest Intel compilers, -static-libcxa does the trick most of the time. (info from Axel Kohlmeyer)

Since there is no standard compiler for Linux, different compilers have different ideas about the right way to call external libraries. As a consequence you may have a mismatch between what your compiler calls ("symbols") and the actual name of the required library call. Use the nm command to determine the name of a library call, as in the following examples:

    nm /usr/local/lib/libblas.a | grep T | grep -i daxpy
    nm /usr/local/lib/liblapack.a | grep T | grep -i zhegv

where typical location and name of libraries is assumed. Most precompiled libraries have lowercase names with one or two underscores (_) appended. configure should select the appropriate preprocessing options in make.sys, but in case of trouble, be aware that:

• the Absoft compiler is case-sensitive (like C and unlike other Fortran compilers) and does not add an underscore to symbol names (note that if your libraries contain uppercase or mixed case names, you are out of luck: You must either recompile your own libraries, or change the #define's in include/f_defs.h);
• both Portland compiler (pgf90) and Intel compiler (ifort/ifc) are case insensitive and add an underscore to symbol names.

With some precompiled lapack libraries, you may need to add -lg2c or -lm or both.