[60 Plymouth]

Hello All,

New to the Forum, new to CFD and new to Linux, so hello! Hopfully I can get some assistance here and in the future be able to offer somthing back.

I'm using Ubuntu v11.10, and I'm trying to install/use OpenFOAM 2.10 and Paraview 3.12.0

I have been following the instructions here: http://www.openfoam.org/download/ubuntu.php

I have gotten to the "User configuration" section and I'm drawing a blank. The commands "gedit ~/.bashrc" appears to do nothing. Nor does following it with "source /opt/openfoam210/etc/bashrc".

I understand that these have to be saved to get openfoam to work? How do I go about doing this? I've been following the instructions to the letter right from VirtualBox download/install, but this has had me stuck for hours.

Openfoam and Paraview are both in the /opt files section as found in the explorer. Attempting to 'start again' and re-install openfoam and paraview, I get a message saying that they are both the latest versions and both already installed.

Trying the "icoFoam -help" command yields "icoFoam: command not found"

I suspect the problem lies with the userconfiguration but I could be wrong.

Any and all help greatly appreciated.

All the best,
60Ply

[wyldckat]

Greetings 60Ply and welcome to the forum!

You're not alone with this issue. I've tried to help another new user with the same problem, so I hope you can work with the information that is already there: http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/ope...irtualbox.html

A blog post that also might be helpful to you: Advanced tips for working with the OpenFOAM shell environment

Good luck!
Bruno

[60 Plymouth]

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I had a look at that thread earlier but concluded that we were experiencing different problems. I shall have to go through it again tomorrow with a clearer head and see if I can get this sorted.

The blog for linux newbies looks excellent, that should put me in a better position for sorting this!

Once again thanks for your help.

All the best,
60 Ply

[60 Plymouth]

Well I got tired of trying to locate the problem and frankly I'm a bit new to all this so I decided to start from the beginning.

Built a new VM with Ubuntu 11.10 and then installed OF again as per the instructions here: http://www.openfoam.org/download/ubuntu.php

As far as I know, I did nothing different but hey, it works!! I now have OF installed on the machine. Thanks Bruno for your help!

Just incase this is related, I shall add it to this post here for future reference. I've been working through the tutorial at http://www.openfoam.org/docs/user/cavity.php#x5-40002.1 and I am encountering a problem with paraView. Although paraView appears useable and works, the terminal starts telling me there are failures, and to turn on 3D acceleration (I shall reproduce the error messages here soon when I disable 3D acceleration again).

With 3D acceleration on, I only get a single error message:
OpenGL Warning: No pincher, please call crStateSetCurrentPointers() in your SPU
OpenGL Warning: No pincher, please call crStateSetCurrentPointers() in your SPU

Although paraView appears to be able to be used, the workspace spends its time on top of everything and the terminal hangs up until I close the operation (this means I cannot run the solver whilst paraFoam is open, as the tutorial implies).

Performing the solve and then running paraFoam for post processing yields this error:

ERROR: In /home/opencfd/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-2.1.0/ParaView-3.12.0/VTK/Rendering/vtkOpenGLExtensionManager.cxx, line 393
vtkOpenGLExtensionManager (0xa594578): Extension GL_VERSION_1_5 could not be loaded.


ERROR: In /home/opencfd/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-2.1.0/ParaView-3.12.0/VTK/Rendering/vtkOpenGLExtensionManager.cxx, line 393
vtkOpenGLExtensionManager (0xa594578): Extension GL_VERSION_1_5 could not be loaded.

Once again, paraFoam appears to 'work', I can manipulate parts of it but it hangs up the terminal if I wish to do somthing else.


I'll see what I can do to solve this and report back if I find the problem.

Once again, thanks for your help,
Conor

[wyldckat]

Hi Conor,

OK, there should be two problems here:

1. If you are using the debian packages from here: http://www.openfoam.org/download/ubuntu.php - it's natural for ParaView to have a hard time working, due to OpenGL library details that were not taken into account. In other words: it was built with a library version of OpenGL that allowed a range of features that the OpenGL on your installation simply doesn't have. This is why you are getting those errors.
2. 3D acceleration in VirtualBox (and AFAIK, it's the same for most of other VM technologies) is still experimental. In other words: sometimes it works, other times it crashes. The annoying thing is that in real machines, the same can also occur due to the drivers for the graphics card still having issues with cards that are too recent.

Either way, the best solution usually is to build from source: http://www.openfoam.org/download/source.php


If you still want to do more testing with the current installation, then look into the blog post where I gather info related to OpenFOAM+ParaView: Related issues to ParaView with OpenFOAM - Fixes and solutions

Keep us updated on your findings, since all of this information can indeed help others in the future!

Best regards,
Bruno