ParaView#
ParaView is an open-source generic visualization application for scientific purposes. It can be executed in a client-server model to facilitate the use of remote powerful parallel computers. In the following we desribe how it can be used by running the server component on fviz1 and the client on your local machine.
Availability / Target HPC systems#
ParaView is also available on Fritz frontend nodes via the
environment module paraview/5.11.2
;
however, we recommend to run it (specifically the server component)
on fviz1.
You can use the following job script on Fritz to allocate 8
cores
of fviz1
and execute pvserver
with 8
MPI processes.
#!/bin/bash -l
#
#SBATCH --nodes=1
#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=8
#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=1
#SBATCH --time=2:00:00
#SBATCH --partition=vis
#SBATCH --export=NONE
unset SLURM_EXPORT_ENV
module load paraview/5.11.2
mpiexec -n 8 pvserver
Alternatively, you can allocate fviz1
via salloc
with --partition=vis
for an interactive run of pvserver
.
The standard output contains information (complete hostname of fviz1
and the port)
required to establish the client-server connection.
Now you can execute the client (paraview
) on your local machine
and attempt to connect to the running server processes
through Menu -> File -> Connect
, or
using the icon.
On the
Choose Server Configuration
dialog, choose Add Server
and insert the Host
and Port
obtained from the standard output of the server on fviz1
.
Subsequently, click on Configure
and then Save
.
Now you can select the saved connection in the list and initiate the connection.
Note that it may take up to a minute to establish the connection.
Notes#
If you are not within the FAU network and cannot use a VPN service, you can use an SSH tunnel to connect to the server as explained in the following:
-
Allocate
fviz1
interactively throughsalloc
. -
In a terminal, connect to
fviz1
using the commandssh -L 11111:localhost:11111 USERNAME@fviz1.nhr.fau.de
.- This assumes that you have set up SSH using proxy jump as explained in our SSH documentation.
-
In the terminal from which you logged in at
fviz1
, load the moduleparaview/5.11.2
and runpvserver
with the number of CPU cores allocated withsalloc
(in this example assuming 8 processors)mpiexec -n 8 pvserver --force-offscreen-rendering --mesa
-
In the
Choose Server Configuration
dialog, add a server with Host and Port equal tolocalhost
and11111
, respectively.