[BenAsbo626]

Hi,

Apologies if I don't give enough information but I will do my best. I'm new to OpenFoam and Ubuntu as a whole.

I have install OpenFOAM 2.3.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 by using the OpenFOAM 2.3.1 installation walkthrough given here:

http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/In...u#Ubuntu_18.04

All seemed to go well. I didn't get any errors.

Now I've started through the v6 tutorials given here:

https://cfd.direct/openfoam/user-guide/v6-cavity/

I've gotten to the point of trying postProcessing.
I used to command:

postProcess -list

and the error greeting me was:

Command 'postProcess' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install openfoam

Which I installed. (I found this confusing but thought it couldn't damage the progress I had already made, as seems that it hasn't).
However now, upon using the command:

postProcess -list

I get the following error:

postProcess: symbol lookup error: postProcess: undefined symbol: _ZN4Foam9UOPstream5writeEl

I have googled the error to try and figure it out and it seems like most symbol lookup errors are library issues. But as I'm so novice, I'm not sure what this means or how to fix it. It seems confusing that it doesn't even want to perform the list command which makes me wonder if its an installation error.

I don't think it would be a library error as I've not started messing with libraries yet so I can't have incomplete libraries causing this error. The only thing I can think it might be is that the installation of OpenFOAM was incomplete and postProcessing was not fullying installed. But by performing an install, that should of fixed it?

Any help or information would be helpful and the more ELI5 the better for me (the novice) to understand.
Thanks,
Ben

[wyldckat]

Quick answer: Nooooooo.... don't install the "openfoam" package that Ubuntu provides This is because the one that Ubuntu/Debian have provided is hard-coded to be always available after installation and does not allow having other OpenFOAM versions installed.

So, first undo the installation of the "openfoam" package, by running this command:

sudo apt remove openfoam libopenfoam openfoam-examples

Second, the actual User Guide to be used with versions 2.3.0 and 2.3.1 should be the document that is provided with the installation. You can find it by running this command:

echo $WM_PROJECT_DIR/doc/Guides-a4/UserGuide.pdf

I will have to update all of the installation wiki pages and fix that last step instruction, because the more recent User Guides are not applicable to the older OpenFOAM versions... therefore, the postProcess application is not available in OpenFOAM 2.3.0/1.

edit: I've updated the wiki pages a few days later, on the 26th of October.

[BenAsbo626]

Thanks so much for the fast reply wyldckat.
I feel quite honoured that it was you who replied.

I have uninstalled openfoam as you said. Would it really cause that many issues with the 2.3.0 to download it or is it more unnecessary clutter? And yes it would be very nice if at the end of the installation instruction it said where the user guide was for the particular build.

I did figure out a couple hours after I posted this that postProcess didn't exist in 2.3.0. From a little searching, it was introduced in 2.4.0.

I might have to use aliasing to also have a more updated version of openFoam.

Thanks again,
Ben

[Moderator note: The part of this post that was referring to aerosolved, was moved to here: How to build/install aerosolved with OpenFOAM 2.3.0? ]