Compiling Tetgen

[Ahmed]

Ok, could you please tell me what executable I ought to look for? I searched the folder /usr/local/bin and I see files as ElmerGUI, ElmerGrid, ElmerMesh2D but nothing like ElmerSolver
2- Could you please tell me what module would produce such file so I can recompile it?

Thanks for your collaboration

[mal]

You should have the executable "ElmerSolver" installed in an appropriate location (usually $ELMER_HOME/bin).

This executable is provided by the "fem" module of the source tree (see compilation instructions for more details).

[Ahmed]

Pilgrim
First have a look at this attachment

Screenshot-ElmerGUI postprocessor.png (104.18 KiB) Viewed 6049 times

Now that we both know that Elmer is installed and running on my Debian partition, then here is your reply to my query

" This happens, if ElmerSolver is unable to start (probably the directory containing ElmerSolver is not in path)."

I have to say it loud and clear that you are right, ElmerSolver is not in the path definition,
now the interesting question is Why?
There is a bug in the fem file and in my modest opinion, it needs the developer or maintainer intervention.
Could you please tell me where can I file a bug report? or is it possible to explain the details on this forum?

I want to thank you for the time you spent trying to help me

Screenshot-Convergence monitor.png (29.34 KiB) Viewed 6049 times

Good luck to all

[mal]

There is a bug in the fem file and in my modest opinion, it needs the developer or maintainer intervention.
Could you please tell me where can I file a bug report? or is it possible to explain the details on this forum?

You can report installation related bugs on this forum.

[Ahmed]

OK pilgrim, it is your game.
Let me tell you that I am not the first to report this problem. You can google for "Unable to start solver Elmer" and see by yourself how many posts are there, even there is an interesting post from the FreeBSD OS maintainers full of technical jargon but no apparent solution.
Here is the procedure I followed.
In a previous post I told you that the compilation of the downloaded fem module files (from the svn repositories) did not succeed and gave error messages about function calls to MPI and hypre libraries, so I downloaded the file fem-5.4.0.tar.gz from your repository, uncompressed it, and installed it
Bug No 1:
in a terminal, change to the folder ~/fem-5.4.0 and type
./configure -- help
I am not reproducing the full output, just the part that is needed to explain the bug

By default, `make install' will install all the files in
`/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/lib' etc. You can specify......etc

No that does not happen. When I finished the ./configure -> make -> make install commands, the file was not there.
I searched my computer and found the ElmerSolver file in /usr/bin
So I copied the ElmerSolver file to be with the other Elmer files and started the ElmerGUI loaded the pump casing project and hit the solver button
Here is the out put

Screenshot-Solver log.png (18 KiB) Viewed 6034 times

the solver is looking for the elements.def file in the /usr/local/share/elmersolver/lib folder
Bug No 2:
that folder was not created and to solve this problem I manually created this folder and copied the elements.def file from the ~/fem-5.4.0/src folder
one more time called the ElmerGUI, loaded the pump casing and hit the solver button.
Here is the output

Screenshot-Solver log-1.png (21.13 KiB) Viewed 6034 times

Bug No 3:
There are more missing files. Well, I did not know what to do so I decided to copy every single file that was in ~/fem-5.4.0/src folder to the manually created folder
i.e. the /usr/local/share/elmersolver/lib .
After that the ElmerSolver behaved correctly and gave the solution. (see previous post).
As you can see, that was quite an education for me but having solved the problem compensated for the rough time I went through.

I really hope that you will take the necessary steps so all linux users can enjoy Elmer
Good luck to all

[mal]

Bug No 1:
in a terminal, change to the folder ~/fem-5.4.0 and type
./configure -- help
I am not reproducing the full output, just the part that is needed to explain the bug

By default, `make install' will install all the files in
`/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/lib' etc. You can specify......etc

No that does not happen. When I finished the ./configure -> make -> make install commands, the file was not there.

I searched my computer and found the ElmerSolver file in /usr/bin

Confirmed.

The default installation prefix for the fem module has been erraneously set to /usr, eventough "./configure --help" reports /usr/local. To circumvent the problem, please pass the full installation prefix explicitely to the configuration script. Use the same prefix for all modules (replace /installation/location here e.g. with /usr/local):

Code: Select all

./configure --prefix=/installation/location

So I copied the ElmerSolver file to be with the other Elmer files and started the ElmerGUI loaded the pump casing project and hit the solver button
Here is the out put
...
the solver is looking for the elements.def file in the /usr/local/share/elmersolver/lib folder
Bug No 2:
that folder was not created and to solve this problem I manually created this folder and copied the elements.def file from the ~/fem-5.4.0/src folder
one more time called the ElmerGUI, loaded the pump casing and hit the solver button.
Here is the output
...

This is a consequence of Bug 1. Resolved by specifying the prefix.

Bug No 3:
There are more missing files. Well, I did not know what to do so I decided to copy every single file that was in ~/fem-5.4.0/src folder to the manually created folder
i.e. the /usr/local/share/elmersolver/lib .
After that the ElmerSolver behaved correctly and gave the solution. (see previous post).

Consequence of Bug 1. Resolved by specifying the prefix.

In what comes to ElmerGUI, it needs a working CLI installation of Elmer core libraries, executables, and environment variables to work:

Code: Select all

export ELMER_HOME=/installation/location
export ELMERGUI_HOME=$ELMER_HOME/bin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ELMER_HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PATH=$PATH:$ELMER_HOME/bin

You might also want to have a look at the user contributed installation instructions.

Thank you for the report.