OpenFOAM and FEniCS Fedora Install Notes

Notes on installing OpenFOAM and FEniCS from source on Fedora 14.

Both projects implement ideas similar to A Livermore Physics Applications Language (NALPAL, why ALPAL): take high-level descriptions of partial differential equations and automatically generate code to solve them with numerical approximations based on finite-volume (OpenFOAM) or finite-element (FEniCS) methods.

Useful Links

• FEniCS install from source

• OpenFoam source pack

• open foam uses paraview, paraview.org
• open foam uses wmake, which is a script that comes with the installation

• FEniCS uses cmake

Steps for OpenFOAM

1. Install Fedora packages for paraview, cmake, flex, qt, zlib.
   [root@deeds foo]$ yum -y install paraview cmake flex qt-devel libXt-devel zlib-devel zlib-static scotch scotch-devel openmpi openmpi-devel
   You probably already have gnuplot and readline installed, if not, install those too.
2. Unpack the OpenFOAM tarball:
   [jstults@deeds OpenFOAM]$ tar -zxvf OpenFOAM-2.0.1.gtgz
3. Add the environment variable definitions to the bashrc file
   source $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.0.1/etc/bashrc
[jstults@deeds OpenFOAM]$ source ~/.bashrc
4. Run the OpenFOAM-X.y.z/bin/foamSystemCheck script, you should get something that says, "System check: PASS", "Continue OpenFOAM installation."
5. Go to the top-level directory, since you defined the proper environment variables that is something like
   [jstults@deeds OpenFOAM]$ cd $WM_PROJECT_DIR
6. Make it
   [jstults@deeds OpenFOAM-X.y.z]$ ./Allwmake
7. Various Consequences ensue...

Steps for FEniCS

Required components: Python packages FFC, FIAT, Instant, Viper and UFL, and Python/C++ packages Dolfin and UFC

1. Install things packaged for Fedora
   [root@deeds FEniCS]$ yum -y install python-ferari python-instant python-fiat
2. Download the other components from launchpad, and install using
   [jstults@deeds FEniCS]$ python setup.py install --prefix=~/FEniCS
   for the Python packages, and
   [jstults@deeds FEniCS]$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/FEniCS ./src
[jstults@deeds FEniCS]$ make
[jstults@deeds FEniCS]$ make install
   for the C++/Python packages (DOLFIN and UFC).

OR, do it automatically if you have root and internet access (I still haven't got this to work: a bit of buffoonery on my part, problems finding boost libraries).

1. Download Dorsal
   
2. Run the script
   [jstults@deeds FEniCS]$ ./dorsal.sh
3. Execute the yum command in the output from the script in another terminal.
   [root@deeds FEniCS]$ yum install -y redhat-lsb bzr bzrtools subversion \ libxml2-devel gcc gcc-c++ openmpi-devel openmpi numpy swig wget \ boost-devel vtk-python atlas-devel suitesparse-devel blas-devel \ lapack-devel cln-devel ginac-devel python-devel cmake \ ScientificPython mpfr-devel armadillo-devel gmp-devel CGAL-devel \ cppunit-devel flex bison valgrind-devel
   I also installed the boost-openmpi-devel and boost-mpich2-devel packages as well. MPI on Fedora is kind of a mess. I added these two lines to my bashrc:
   module unload mpich2-i386
module load openmpi-i386
   
4. When the packages are installed, go back to the terminal running dorsal.sh and hit ENTER.

I ended up downloading the development version of dorsal to get the latest third-party software built, because it's so easy:
[jstults@deeds dorsal]$ bzr branch lp:dorsal
Pretty darn slick, Yea for distributed version control systems! Boo for dependency hell!

FEniCS is currently under heavy development towards a 1.0 release, so I expect to be able to build it on Fedora 14 Real Soon Now ; - )

Update: Johannes and friends got me straightened out.