Unable to run pvserver in parallel
 

Has anybody had any success running a parallel instance of pvserver as it is included with FOAM 1.7? I compiled FOAM and ParaFoam from the git repository (1.7.x) and everything works as expected except for pvserver.

I should be able to execute "mpirun -np 8 pvserver" to start a ParaView server on a single computer with multiple CPUs (8). When I do that, however, I get 8 lines, the first of which indicates the pvserver has been started:

Listen on port: 11111
Waiting for client.....

But the following 7 lines repeat:

Listen on port: 11111
ERROR: In /home/user/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-1.7.x/paraview-3.8.0/Servers/Common/vtkProcessModuleConnectionmanager.cxx, line 191
vtkProcessModuleConnectionManager : Failed to set up server socket.

I've found sources online that tell me that exact error message is produced when the port chosen (11111) is being used by another program. So "mpirun -np 8 pvserver" is actually launching 8 instances of pvserver, the first of which successfully grabs port 11111 and the last 7 which spit out errors because port 11111 has already been taken by the first instance.

Has anybody seen behavior like this before, and/or does anybody have any suggestion on how I could fix it? Is there anything special that needs to be done to enable MPI during paraFoam compilation? THANKS!!

Hi md_lieber,
It's because the ParaView was not compiled with MPI support. Try compiling ParaView by yourself with MPI support. Also, PV3FoamReader is not compatible with client/server mode of ParaView. Try the builtin reader of ParaView 3.8 instead (create a stub file with .foam extension under your case directory and open it from ParaView).

Additionally, you might take a look at another thread that deals with the same topic.

T

Brilliant find; my apologies for missing something so obvious already on the forums. I'm going to go read up and look into recompiling ParaView.

Thank you!

Hi,

I am having the exact same problem.

1. Did the recompilation with MPI worked out for you?

2. And after starting the servers, how should i proceed to read a OpenFOAM Case file?

THX