Paraview at PDC
Available versions
To see which versions of paraview are available at PDC you can use the command
module avail paraview
Running paraview
Paraview uses a client/server model to do parallel visualisation, and has a flexible way to connect the client (which normally runs on your local computer i.e. the one your keyboard is connected to) to the server (which can run in parallel on PDC machines).
The process has several steps
- Start the client on your local computer
- Start the server on the PDC machines
- Configure the client to connect to the server
Starting the client on your local computer
As this is unlikely to be a PDC machine then you should check the paraview documentation for how to do this
Starting the server on the PDC machines
First log into the PDC machine you want to use and reserve the nodes you want to use. Check the documentation of each machine on the best way to do this
Secondly load the required modules to access paraview, As paraview is complicated software with several dependancies there will be multiple modules required. e.g. for paraview 3.8.1 on Ekman
module add mesa/7.5.2 openmpi/1.4.1-gcc qt/4.7.0 paraview/3.8.1
Once you have loaded the module and reserved the nodes you can start the server in parallel using mpirun. Make sure you start the server in the correct place (i.e. not on the login nodes, but on the nodes you have reserved)
mpirun -np <number of processors> -machinefile <machine file> pvserver --use-offscreen-rendering
You should then get some text output showing which port paraview is using
Listen on port: 11111 Waiting for client...
11111 is the default port, but you an configure pvserver to use a different one.
Connecting the client to the server
You now have to tell your client to connect to the server.
This is done by
- Open the choose server window in paraview (file menu then click connect)
- Click add server
- This opens the configure new server box
- The name field is just to help you remember which server you are configuring.
- Server type should be client server
- Host is the address of the nodes you are running the server on (e.g. k33n39.pdc.kth.se). The server shold NOT be running on the login nodes
- Port is as above (default is 11111)
- Click configure
- Then select manual startup type
- Click save
- Now select the server we whose details we just entered and click connect
Your client should now connect to the pvserver we set up and you should be able to do parallel rendering.
