[RKyle]

Hi guys,

First off: I'm no Linux master yet so please forgive my lack of understanding with the terms...

I'm trying to run OpenFOAM 4.1 on my University's cluster with no success so far; it cannot load OpenFOAM. I can source it but the commands do not work ('blockMesh -help' for example).

On my desktop I have blueCFD-Core installed to run OpenFOAM which seems to have it's own MinGW environment that sets up on loading, this all works perfectly. I installed a separate Linux console (called Cmder) on my desktop to try source and run OpenFOAM too, to see if I could work out why it might not be working on the cluster (as well as get some practice!), but it's having the same problem of sourcing but not running commands. I get the attached error message when sourcing it, which is probably the cause of the problem; apparently my "MSYS_NT-6.1-WOW operating system is not supported", but I know that this version of OpenFOAM can run on my computer since the blueCFD one works. I guess that changing the shell from this to MinGW could help or something?

I've also attached the environment variables for my blueCFD-Core set-up (which works) and the Cmder ones (which doesn't) to help pinpoint the problem. Both consoles are on my desktop, not the cluster yet.

Is anyone able to help me get Cmder to run OpenFOAM? If I was a Linux guru I'm sure I'd find the problem very easily but sadly I'm not. Any help is most certainly appreciated!


Kind regards,

Ryan

[wyldckat]

Greetings Ryan,

I'm a bit late to answer your questions, but first a quick disclaimer: I'm the main developer of blueCFD-Core.

As for your questions: I am curious why you want to use Cmder instead of Mintty that comes with MSys2 (packaged with blueCFD-Core), for the terminal-like command line... wait, I re-read your post again:

Originally Posted by RKyle

I installed a separate Linux console (called Cmder) on my desktop to try source and run OpenFOAM too, to see if I could work out why it might not be working on the cluster (as well as get some practice!), but it's having the same problem of sourcing but not running commands. I get the attached error message when sourcing it, which is probably the cause of the problem; apparently my "MSYS_NT-6.1-WOW operating system is not supported", but I know that this version of OpenFOAM can run on my computer since the blueCFD one works. I guess that changing the shell from this to MinGW could help or something?

Yes, the issue is that it's in the file "etc/prefs-mingw_w64.sh" in the OpenFOAM package provided with blueCFD-Core, that there are specific settings for defining the MinGW environment to be used, as you can see here: https://github.com/blueCFD/OpenFOAM-...s-mingw_w64.sh


The proper solution is that you need to configure Cmder to start up Bash the same was that is done in MSys2, so that it loads in Bash with MinGW-w64 loaded in for the initial environment.
A quick Google-search and I found this report on the Cmder development project: https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder/issues/1493 - from which you need to follow this information:

create a new task and use:

set MSYSTEM=MINGW64 & "C:\msys64\usr\bin\bash.exe" --login -i

The other detail is that you need to use the same home folder that blueCFD-Core provides, namely the one at "blueCFD-Core-2016/msys64/home/ofuser". This is because the ".bashrc" file and other files in that folder provide the necessary settings for ensuring that everything is set-up properly. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to provide a repository that has these files from the user folder that is provided with blueCFD-Core, but if you study the script code in the file ".bashrc", you should see each extra step and which scripts it needs in order to properly load in the correct environment.

From what I can deduce, it should as simple as creating said task in Cmder with the following code:

set MSYSTEM=MINGW64 & set USER=ofuser & set USERNAME=ofuser & "C:\blueCFD-Core-2016\msys64\usr\bin\bash.exe" --login -i

It should do everything else automatically on its own, since it's loading in this specific MSys2 installation and the necessary environment files needed to use this MSys2 installation that blueCFD-Core provides.



Now, going back to the problem in the University cluster and loading OpenFOAM, I would instead suggest that you study this page: https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/I...with_the_Shell - at least to get you started with understanding how to use OpenFOAM on Linux. Beyond this, do the administrators of the cluster provide specific instructions on how to use OpenFOAM or did you have to build it from source code?

Best regards,
Bruno