ug4
Prerequisites and Recommendend Tools

Table of Contents

Note
This page is outdated. Please use uginstall - Scripts for installation .

On this page you'll find short installation instructions for additional software that might be useful — or is even necessary — for working with ug4 (especially on clusters).

So, in case a software needed for a certain task is not available on the system (or has the wrong version number) one has to install it locally (unless you have administrator privileges - congratulations ...)

We propose the following procedures for which we assume that all additional software is installed in a directory local directly in your home directory (version numbers are those of the most recent (stable) versions at the time this documentation was written).

A basic understanding of the used Unix tools (wget, tar, ...) is useful but not necessary (instructions should work "out of the box" — except for the version numbers — check for a version that is appropriate for you and adapt the respective file name).

Instead of using wget, you can also use curl (as is installed on Mac), like 

curl -O http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.6.tar.gz

Installation of CMake (required)

CMake can be installed with 

uginstall cmake

see uginstall - Scripts for installation.

If that fails: You may install CMake through a pre-built installer, which can be obtained here: http://www.cmake.org/cmake/resources/software.html (min Release 2.6). Be sure to install the command line tools, when prompted during installation.

You can alternatively compile and install a local version of the CMake build tool by doing the following steps:

  1. Download tar ball: 
    cd ~/local
wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.6.tar.gz
  2. Unpack: 
    tar xvzf cmake-2.8.6.tar.gz
  3. Configure and build: 
    cd cmake-2.8.6/
./bootstrap --prefix=$HOME/local
make
make install
  4. Shortcut for executing CMake from command-line (i.e., add a line like the following in your .bashrc (for Bash): 
    alias cmake='$HOME/local/bin/cmake'
    or (for Tcsh): 
    alias cmake '$HOME/local/bin/cmake'

Installation of Boost (optional)

A version of the Boost library is automatically checked out and available in the externals/ sub directory of your trunk (since Jan 2012), so a local installation is usually no longer necessary for building ug4. But if you need a special (e.g. newer) version, you can get one this way:

  1. Download tar ball: 

    cd ~/local
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.48.0/boost_1_48_0.tar.gz

  2. Unpack (no build necessary!) into a directory which has to be contained in your search path (see next step): 

    tar xzf boost_1_48_0.tar.gz

  3. and add Boost root directory to search path (i.e., add a line like the following in your .profile (for Bash): 

    export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/local/boost_1_48_0

    or (for Tcsh): 

    set PATH = ($PATH $HOME/local/boost_1_48_0)

  4. Instruct CMake to use your own copy of Boost when configuring ug4 
    cmake -DINTERNAL_BOOST=OFF <further cmake parameters> ..

Installation of LUA (optional)

You can install a local version of the Lua interpreter by performing the following steps, so that you are able to execute Lua scripts "stand alone" (i.e. without utilising ug4's Lua capabilities):

  1. Download tar ball: 
    cd ~/local
wget http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz
  2. Unpack: 
    tar xvzf lua-5.1.4.tar.gz
  3. Build and install (cf. INSTALL): 
    cd lua-5.1.4/
make linux
make local
  4. Shortcut for executing Lua from command-line (i.e., add a line like the following in your .bashrc (for Bash)): 
    alias lua='$HOME/local/lua-5.1.4/bin/lua'
    or (for Tcsh): 
    alias lua '$HOME/local/lua-5.1.4/bin/lua'
  5. Usage example, executing (a local copy of) the "analyser script" described in Specific Information about Scalability Tests : 
    lua my_scaling_analyzer.lua

Installation of ParaView (optional)

You can install a local version of ParaView by performing the following steps (only described for installation of a "precompiled binary", which usually will be the preferred way):

  1. Download tar ball:
    Go to http://www.paraview.org/paraview/resources/software.php and choose the version, type (e.g. "ParaView Binary Installer") and OS, and download the tar ball and move it in the directory where you want to install ParaView: 
    mv ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit.tar.gz ~/local
  2. Unpack: 
    cd ~/local
tar xvzf ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit.tar.gz
  3. After unpacking a binary installer the executables reside in e.g. 
    ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit/
    See the documentation (e.g. http://paraview.org/Wiki/The_ParaView_Tutorial) for how to build ParaView from sources (CMake and a compiler (of course) necessary — and a bit time).
  4. Shortcuts for executing the ParaView client and server from command-line (i.e., add lines like the following in your .bashrc (for Bash)): 
    alias paraview='$HOME/local/ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit/bin/paraview'
alias pvserver='$HOME/local/ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit/bin/pvserver'
    or (for Tcsh): 
    alias paraview '$HOME/local/ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit/bin/paraview'
alias pvserver '$HOME/local/ParaView-3.14.0-Linux-64bit/bin/pvserver'
  5. Basic usage (using the shortcut mentioned above):
    • Start an instance of ParaView and load a datafile: 
      paraview --data=<VTK-File>
    • Start an instance of ParaView and load a (previously saved) state file (with ending .pvsm): 
      paraview --state=<state file>

For parallel rendering see e.g. Parallel Rendering.

Installation BLAS/LAPACK (optional)

  • Note: On most systems, LAPACK and BLAS are preinstalled and are found by cmake.
  • On some clusters, LAPACK/BLAS are kind of "built into" the compiler, so you don't have to specify anything. In this case, use
    cmake -DBUILTIN_BLAS=ON -DBUILTIN_LAPACK=ON
    Ask the administrator for help.
  • On some systems, you'd have to install LAPACK/BLAS manually. You can do this on most systems via their package managers.
  • If you can't find/get/install the packages: Download GotoBLAS2.
  • extract the source to ~/software/GotoBLAS2/
  • Choose one of the quickbuild.* files there and execute it.
  • Now add the path ~/software/GotoBLAS2 to the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH by adding the line 
      LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:~/software/GotoBLAS2/
    add the end of your ~/.bashrc.
  • remember to source ~/.bashrc
  • Now cmake should accept GotoBLAS2 as LAPACK/BLAS library.