Problems when installing MFIX on HPC

MFiX How to
#1

Hi Team,

We are trying to install MFIX on our HPC cluster. However, we have met the following error. Could you please give us any suggestions on how to solve these problems?

Thanks very much for your help.

The 1st trial: apparently with no problem, but can not work.

@t110 ~]$ source activate mfix-19.3.0
(mfix-19.3.0) [~]$ mfix
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
ERROR: In …/Rendering/OpenGL2/vtkOpenGLRenderWindow.cxx, line 741
vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow (0x55555c7c2190): GLEW could not be initialized: Missing GL version

The 2nd trial: see below

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ERROR REPORT <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/moto/opt/anaconda3-2019.03/lib/python3.7/site-packages/conda/exceptions.py", line 1003, in __call__
    return func(*args, **kwargs)

(…)

      package cache : /moto/opt/anaconda3-2019.03/pkgs
                      /moto/home/ab2080/.conda/pkgs
   envs directories : /moto/home/ab2080/.conda/envs
                      /moto/opt/anaconda3-2019.03/envs
           platform : linux-64
         user-agent : conda/4.6.11 requests/2.21.0 CPython/3.7.3 Linux/3.10.0-862.el7.x86_64 rhel/7.5 glibc/2.17
            UID:GID : 110745:10
         netrc file : None
       offline mode : False

An unexpected error has occurred. Conda has prepared the above report.

If submitted, this report will be used by core maintainers to improve
future releases of conda.
Would you like conda to send this report to the core maintainers?

#2

MFiX uses VTK for 3d rendering. It seems like there is an issue with VTK or OpenGL drivers on your system.

You can run MFiX with VTK disabled using -k. That would let you run the GUI to create cases and run the solver, though it won’t display the rendering of the model.

> mfix --help                                                                                                                                                          (mfix-19.3.1)
usage: mfix [-h] [-e EXE] [-l LOG] [-s STYLE] [-n] [-w] [-k] [-g] [-d] [-c]
            [-t] [-ct] [--save] [-v]
            [project]

MFiX GUI

positional arguments:
  project               open mfix.dat or <RUN_NAME>.mfx project file or search
                        a specified directory for project files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -e EXE, --exe EXE     specify MFiX executable (full path)
  -l LOG, --log LOG     set logging level (error, warning, info, debug)
  -s STYLE, --style STYLE
                        specify app style ['windows', 'fusion', 'macintosh']
  -n, --noload          do not autoload previous project
  -w, --nonodeworks     do not load the nodeworks environment
  -k, --novtk           do not load vtk
  -g, --default_geo     Use default geometry, don't restore previous state.
  -d, --developer       Enable developer mode.
  -c, --clear           Clear all saved settings.
  -t, --test            Enable test mode.
  -ct, --thumbnails     Create thumbnails in test mode.
  --save                Save the project in test mode.
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
#3

Hi,

Sorry for jumping on this.

We are having similar issue on our TALAPAS cluster with MFIX-19.3.1 with this error:

Received error: vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow (0x55555c7bdd30): GLEW could not be initialized: Missing GL version

I had similar issues with mfix 18.1.5 and used this command, which worked:
env MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2 mfix -n &

Apparently this does not work anymore with 19.1.3. Any suggestion?

Thank you for the help.

Eric

#4

Hi, thanks very much for your help. The problems have been solved following your suggestions.

#7

Does Paraview work on your cluster? VTK is the underlying library in Paraview.

If it worked for an older version of MFiX, you could try down grading the VTK library.

#8

Paraview works with these commands:

module load paraview
env MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2 paraview &

I ll try to downgrade the vtk version as suggested

#9

We figured out 2 months ago the VTK issue we have on our HPC cluster only occurs with Macs, but works fine when using Windows and Linux. On our cluster we used the Open OnDemand portal and we could finally display the vtk of the MFIX GUI (and ParaView).