CFD Online Discussion Forums - Start star ccm+ remotely with mpiexec

Hi,

I am fairly new to CFD but I have tried and searched for a while and I am still having some trouble to start Star CCM+ remotely on multiple computers.

I have a couple of computers all belonging to the same domain running Windows XP. What I would like to do is run a simulation on multiple computers and be able to log off of my user session.

What I manage to do is start a simulation on multiple computers via Star CCM+'s gui, but I have to keep the master process on the machine from where I launch the simulation (if I try otherwise Star CCM+ runs rsh and it fails for some reason), and so if I log off from my session the server process is closed and the computation stops.

I managed to start a server process on either computer on the domain, start the simulation by opening a client and then disconnect and log off of my user session. I do that by running mpiexec this way :

Code:

mpiexec -n 5 -logon -host computer-name starccm+ -server -collab "my-file.sim"

However, I cannot get the server to start worker processes on other computers by itself, ie. something like that :

Code:

mpiexec -n 9 -logon -host comp1 starccm+ -server -on comp1:4,comp2:4 -collab "my-file.sim"

will open 8 worker processes on comp1 and none on comp2. This confuses me as the same line run from Star CCM+'s gui will distribute the processes properly between hosts.
Could someone point out what I am missing ?

Also, once I logged off, I cannot close the server properly. If I open a client and close the simulation within it, I have a message saying that the server wasn't created from this client, I chose to close it nonetheless, but the processes linger and I have to kill them manually.

Also², appending -batch in the command line does not start the iterating process and I have to run the simulation by opening a client.

Hope I was clear enough,
Romain