Problems of zlib-ng with intel@2021.5.0 on some - not all - systems

[climbfuji]

Describe the bug

We have noted problems on some - not all - platforms with intel@2021.5.0 when we switched from zlib to zlib-ng in spack-stack-1.7.0. These issues went away when using a different version of the compiler (anything between 2021.3.0 and 2021.11.0).

One problem users have reported is errors when using git clone:

fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Another problem seems to be running pip install.

It is therefore recommended to avoid using intel@2021.5.0 unless it is the only option - add this to our compiler compatibility table.

To Reproduce
On Discover SCU16 or S4, build unified environment for spack-stack-1.7.0 with intel@2021.5.0 and try to run git clone

Expected behavior
None of the errors described above

System:
Discover SCU16 and S4 (these are the one we know are affected), potentially others

Additional context
n/a

[AlexanderRichert-NOAA]

Any chance the affected systems are Rocky/RHEL derivatives? 🙃

[climbfuji]

One is SLES12 and another is CentOS 7.9 - Rocky 8 and Penguin seem to be fine ?!??!

[climbfuji]

This has been resolved by

• moving to intel@2021.6.0 on Discover SCU16
• modifying the zlib-api provider on S4 only to zlib instead of zlib-ng
• checking that none of the other platforms using intel@2021.5.0 is affected