[robert_dekker]

Dear All,

I am a newbie here. Just downloaded OpenFoam to taste my CFD thirst.

I am really unable to decompress the OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz file. I tried downloading gzip and I have no clue to proceed next ?? (As I don't really know to decompress .gtgz with Gzip).

Can someone help me with this very basic installation problem.

Rob.

[fra76]

As far as I know, installing OpenFOAM under windows is not easy . You should install cygwin to "emulate" a linux environment and rebuild the whole application from source, with some problem regarding the case-unsensitive windows file system.
Take a look to this discussions:
http://www.cfd-online.com/OpenFOAM_D...ges/1/939.html
http://www.cfd-online.com/OpenFOAM_D...ges/1/103.html
or try to search "windows installation" using the "Search" utility.

What about installing linux? Fedora, as well as OpenSuse, are really easy to use and to install, and they are free...
Francesco

Unfortunately, no.

First, you seem to have missed the part of the OpenFOAM documentation which explains that the official version from the OpenFOAM website is currently only supported on Unix and Linux systems. It does not work on Windows at all.

Second, as it happens, the OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz file cannot even be unpacked on Windows (without a substantial amount of trouble) even if you knew how to use gzip. It was created on a case-sensitive filesystem that allows files named "Vector" and "vector" in the same directory, and there are several cases like that in the archive. This isn't permitted on Windows, and so there is no way that the archive could be correctly unpacked.

In any case, even if you did manage to correct that, the compilation system depends on enough of the Unix and Linux shells that it won't run at all without them, and so you couldn't get the source code to compile.

It's not completely impossible to run OpenFOAM on Windows -- there is an unofficial port (which I'm partly responsible for) of OpenFOAM to Cygwin, which is a Linux-like system that runs on top of Windows. However, it is rather a bit fiddly to use and doesn't include the graphical interface, and so I really wouldn't recommend it to people who are not already reasonably familiar with both Cygwin and OpenFOAM.

My recommendation for the easiest way to get started with OpenFOAM -- and this is what I did when I was first using it -- is to find an older PC that you're not using for anything, and install some version of Linux on it, and install OpenFOAM on that. It will run perfectly well on something like a 400MHz Pentium-II, though maybe not all that fast for large calculations.

Or, on second thought, the easiest way these days is probably to go to the VMWAre website, download a (free) copy of the VMWare Player and one of the Linux virtual machines for it. That gives you a virtual Linux machine that you can run on your Windows machine, and then you can install OpenFOAM on that just as you would on a physical Linux machine.

Oh, and when you get to that point, the command (on a Linux machine, not in Windows!) to extract the OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz file is:
tar -xzvf OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz

You probably will need at least some basic documentation on how to use Linux, or a local expert you can talk to, if you've not done it before.

[ewr]

Though to be fair, I have used the unofficial port of OpenFOAM to Cygwin for several months now and have found it very useful.

I am very new to OpenFOAM, Cygwin, Linux, and paraview, but by following Brooks Windows installation instructions and doing the tutorials in the user and programmer's guide I figured things out.


Errol

(Thanks again Brooks for the cygwin port)

[lachie]

Originally Posted by brooksmoses

Unfortunately, no.

First, you seem to have missed the part of the OpenFOAM documentation which explains that the official version from the OpenFOAM website is currently only supported on Unix and Linux systems. It does not work on Windows at all.

Second, as it happens, the OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz file cannot even be unpacked on Windows (without a substantial amount of trouble) even if you knew how to use gzip. It was created on a case-sensitive filesystem that allows files named "Vector" and "vector" in the same directory, and there are several cases like that in the archive. This isn't permitted on Windows, and so there is no way that the archive could be correctly unpacked.

In any case, even if you did manage to correct that, the compilation system depends on enough of the Unix and Linux shells that it won't run at all without them, and so you couldn't get the source code to compile.

It's not completely impossible to run OpenFOAM on Windows -- there is an unofficial port (which I'm partly responsible for) of OpenFOAM to Cygwin, which is a Linux-like system that runs on top of Windows. However, it is rather a bit fiddly to use and doesn't include the graphical interface, and so I really wouldn't recommend it to people who are not already reasonably familiar with both Cygwin and OpenFOAM.

My recommendation for the easiest way to get started with OpenFOAM -- and this is what I did when I was first using it -- is to find an older PC that you're not using for anything, and install some version of Linux on it, and install OpenFOAM on that. It will run perfectly well on something like a 400MHz Pentium-II, though maybe not all that fast for large calculations.

Or, on second thought, the easiest way these days is probably to go to the VMWAre website, download a (free) copy of the VMWare Player and one of the Linux virtual machines for it. That gives you a virtual Linux machine that you can run on your Windows machine, and then you can install OpenFOAM on that just as you would on a physical Linux machine.

Oh, and when you get to that point, the command (on a Linux machine, not in Windows!) to extract the OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz file is:
tar -xzvf OpenFOAM-1.3.General.gtgz

You probably will need at least some basic documentation on how to use Linux, or a local expert you can talk to, if you've not done it before.

help lot, thx! fortunately, i just have a big expert sit behind me in our lab!