Installing OpenFOAM and ParaView in VirtualBox(Ubuntu on Win8)
 

I am currently on my second attempt at installing OpenFOAM and ParaView on Ubuntu 13.04 (raring?) on Win 8 (Standard version)

On the first occasion I used the debian binary install pack from the OpenFoam.org website and managed to get the programs mostly running although found that the package used paraview 3.12, released around 2010.

I subsequently tried to install ParaView 4.0.1 but seemingly just messed everything up. Consequently I created a new virtual machine, again installing Ubuntu 13.04.

I have now installed OpenFOAM 2.2.1 (I think?) but did not download the paraview3120 package. Separately downloading paraview 4.0.1 seems to be simple, but installing it is something more of a problem.

My problem refers to this installation.

Should I
a) continue trying to work through the installation instructions for a paraview 4 binary package using cmake, ccmake, qt/MESA?
b) ignore the issues/bugs presented in paraview 3.12 and just get on with it using that version?
c) attempt to compile source code for any/all of openfoam 2.2.1, paraview 4.0.1, cmake and ccmake, qt or MESA?
d) (added with edit) install paraview 3.98.0-1 using apt-get install paraview. This seems to be the latest version available in whichever database stores packages, and so presumably would be easy to install and would avoid some of the problems fixed since 3.12, and might then only require the changing of the paraFoam script.

I *think* I understand that if I install ParaView 4 then I will need to alter the paraFoam script, but hope that this will be a simple step once I reach that point.
Currently my OpenFoam seems to work although with no ParaView installed I cannot open any visualisations (obviously).

Apologies for an extended post from someone who knows very little about Linux systems or OpenFOAM/ParaView.

I hope that someone can help.

Progress
 

So having dug around in the paraFoam script I have discovered that my previous post may have been very stupid. Turns out that by downloading the binaries for ParaView I have 'installed' it, almost. Moving it around a bit and unpacking it, then adding ~/ParaView/bin to my //etc/environment file now allows me to run paraview using just the command(?) paraview, from any directory.

I now seek to take my files constructed by OpenFOAM, for example the data points in files 0->0.5, constant, system in the cavity example, and put them into paraview. I am instructed that I need to execute ./Allwclear and ./Allwmake from some directory, moving there and opening using gedit provides some not very clear thoughts on what they're meant to do? Seems I need to set a PV_READER_DIR or something, but I am unsure where this should be. Setting it temporarily to ~/ParaView/lib didn't work, although that folder(?) does contain a number of PV* files.

Any thoughts or advice at this point would be much appreciated

Greetings Christian,

Sorry for the late reply, but only now did I finally managed to get to this point in the forum.

OK, the solution should be simple enough, since you can run the paraview command from the command line, namely you can run:
If this works, you can create an alias command for this... as explained here: http://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/In...om_source_code

Best regards,
Bruno