How to interpret an error message in Openfoam.
 

Hi everyone,

I am new on OpenFoam, but I started using this open source software as it seems to provide an infinite amount of possibilities for future developpement of fluid mechanism.

I read and watched lots of tutorials and threads beforehands, but when I started using this software, I had an error. It may seems like a simple issue but so what can I do with my error ?

I searched on the internet where to find the error source, tried to solve the error itself ... But nothing was corresponding and I found myself in a ditch as I didn't know how to solve the problem by myself.

Then I had two choices, create a post for my actual problem, or create a post for all my future problems and for all the other beginners, and here it is.

I WANT TO KNOW HOW TO SOLVE MY ERRORS BY MYSELF.

I found lots of tutorials and documents about how to use Openfoam but none really usefull about how to solve an error. I told you already, I am new on this software and I don't really know much about the syntax and structure of the folders. I would like to know if someone know where I can find a guide that can help me understand my problems and how to solve them myself.

Here is an exemple of what I mean, illustrating an error I got back then using a software based of Openfoam:

So what can I do with this, and what does everything means (how to interpret) ? There is some numbers into brackets in the first lines, then some other numbers, desktop-based informations ...

I roughly saw "Foam::adaptiveFvMesh::checkEightAnchorPoints" , so I searched and found the location of the document in the Openfoam library and some leads, but nothing more.

I am not looking for a way th solve this problem but a way to solve all my future problems without going on this forum to post my problems. Does someone know where I can find some guidelines about how to interpret and solve my modeling problems ?

Thanks everyone for reading all my rambling.

Have a nice week.

Guillaume.

Compilation with DEBUG flag on can provide you more elaborate and precise traceback messages for the fatal errors. The compilation you have by default is with the optimisation on, hence such cryptic messages occur when an error happens. Try to compile OpenFOAM with DEBUG mode, and rerun this case. If the error could be reproducible, you will get error messages tracking down to the line of the code causing the pain. Using a debugger, e.g. gdb, could also be very useful.

Particular to this error message, the main error signal is the "Segmentation fault" - it may indicate a scenario where the code computed something but wasn't instructed to know where to put the computed value (e.g. input/output). "[number]" shows the global processor-ID in a parallel simulation.

Hope these help a bit.

Thank you for these leads, I searched on the internet about the debugging on OpenFoam using serial debuggers such as gdb and the built-in DebugSwitch option.

I will try these solutions and try to improve in this area.

It helped me, thanks a lot.