Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 9.10 - was: Gmsh problems

Discussion about building and installing Elmer
petroo
Posts: 148
Joined: 13 Jan 2010, 19:07
Location: Aachen, Germany

Re: Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 9.10 - was: Gmsh problems

Post by petroo »

Hello @all,

once again, an update - but this time a definitely more positive one:

After tinkering around further with a recently updated SVN export (last Wednesday; I think) in both Ubuntu 8.04 (non-CAELinux, 32 bit)) and U 9.10 (64 bit) and doing the configuration in root mode the FORTRAN problem disappeared, but the import issue still remained - contrary to CAELinux where it worked flawlessly.

Resorting to an explicit ElmerGrid conversion (either ElmerGrid 14 2 xxx.msh -autoclean for GMSH files, or ElmerGrid 8 2 yyy.unv - autoclean for Salomé files) anteceding the Elmer import (not by "open", but by "load mesh") the respective geometries are displayed correctly in ElmerGUI in all Ubuntu configurations. The OpenMPI based parallel solver also works in all Ubuntu versions now.

This holds as well for the native Ubuntu 9.10 bundled version of Elmer, even though I eliminated that and replaced it by the SVN exported one.

So, to conclude, my new findings are (given in bold red and so in the same expression strength as my former negative bulletin :oops: )

# Elmer 5.5.0 (as distributed in Ubuntu 9.10) is functional

# Elmer 5.5.0 distributed in CAELinux (= adapted Ubuntu 8.04) is working with older GMSH and Salomé UNV mesh exports out of the box, being able to open respective mesh files with the ElmerGUI->Open dialog.

# Elmer SVN (as of 25.02.2010) is compilable under both U 8.04 (standard edition, 32 bit) and U 9.10 (standard edition, 64 bit) after apt-getting quite a lot of additional deb packages. (I seem to remember that one or two packages weren't mentioned in the installation hints, and I found those necessities only by googling for respective error messages during the compilation phase. After everything now works it is somewhat difficult to retrieve their names, though.)

# Elmer 5.5.0 (packaged in U 9.10) and custom-compiled Elmer SVN in the said distributions cooperate with the meshes produced by GMSH and Salomé also for their newest versions. Even older GMSH meshes will need the aforementioned ElmerGrid after-treatment before importing them into Elmer.


Thanks for the discussion in here and some other threads that brought me finally back to the path again!

Peter
Last edited by petroo on 06 Mar 2010, 19:32, edited 1 time in total.
hazelsct
Posts: 153
Joined: 05 Oct 2009, 17:02
Location: Boston, MA, USA
Contact:

Re: Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 9.10 - was: Gmsh problems

Post by hazelsct »

Hello Peter,

The Ubuntu elmer package is based on the one in Debian, so if you have trouble with it, please consider filing a bug in the Debian bug tracking system http://bugs.debian.org/ . Because I use Ubuntu, I generally update the Opennovation repository for Ubuntu (mentioned above) when I build a new version for Debian unstable, so they should be at the same version, and for the most part have about the same bugs.

Also, I'm working on a Salomé package for Debian/Ubuntu, and will upload it as soon as some reverse-depends are sorted out.

Unfortunately, I have no control over the Ubuntu syncs from Debian unstable, and thus the packages which go into the canonical Ubuntu distribution.

-Adam
petroo
Posts: 148
Joined: 13 Jan 2010, 19:07
Location: Aachen, Germany

Re: Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 9.10 - was: Gmsh problems

Post by petroo »

Hello Adam,

thanks for the organisational clarifications on the interdependences of the distro packages!
hazelsct wrote:The Ubuntu elmer package is based on the one in Debian, so if you have trouble with it, please consider filing a bug in the Debian bug tracking system http://bugs.debian.org/ .
I'd like to do so, but the problem is not based in the packages by themselves, but in the cooperation of the various teaming players: Each of them seems to work as anticipated, but this does not suffice for a proper usage: Since the geometry and mesh generation in Elmer itself is somewhat rudimentary as far as real 3-D geometries are concerned, a user will almost necessarily have to switch to some other tool to define those items.

But if I consider Gmsh and Salomé they both seem to have their quirks when it comes to interfacing with Elmer via the mesh definition. OTOH I cannot stay just in the Salomé framework as their PDE solvers don't seem to provide the modules I need.

I guess the greatest problem is a somewhat lacking cooperation of the developers of the relevant pragmatic modules, since a feature that once worked (like direct geometry/mesh loading of Gmsh or Salomé meshes into Elmer) suddenly failed - a thing that got me quite out of concept for a while, as older, working versions of cooperations suddenly failed as well.

So, as a concluding statement to your message: I cannot point with a finger just to one of the packages, all being correct within themselves, but I (repeatedly) staggered over a lacking or changing cooperation of workflow-wise logically connected ones. I guess this is beyond your scope as a package maintainer. But please correct me if I am wrong!

Kind regards,

Peter
sebastian-arg
Posts: 1
Joined: 19 Mar 2010, 19:44

Re: Incompatibilities with Ubuntu 9.10 - was: Gmsh problems

Post by sebastian-arg »

Hello everyone. After several trials, I find the solution of the problem appeared when trying to open a file built in Gmsh with Elmer 5.5.0, packaged into Ubuntu 9.10. For some reason, ELMER considers the comma instead of point (dot) as decimal separator, as Gmsh does. Thus, performing this change the problem is solved. I did it with the attachment (PowerStation.tar.gz) and there were no problems.
I'm testing Elmer 5.5.0, packaged into Ubuntu 9.10, to teach CFD at a University in Argentina. Greetings

Sebastián Pereyra
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