Precompiled serial versions of Visit can be downloaded from the Visit homepage.
A working parallel version of Visit 1.4.5 is available on the ASAP cluster? in the directory /home/tools/visit
. To use it, add the following settings to your shell environment
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/tools/visit/1.4.5/linux-intel/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
or setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/tools/visit/1.4.5/linux-intel/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export VISITPLUGINDIR=/home/tools/visit/1.4.5/linux-intel/plugins
or setenv VISITPLUGINDIR /home/tools/visit/1.4.5/linux-intel/plugins
visit
(optional)
export PATH=/home/tools/visit/bin:$PATH
or setenv PATH /home/tools/visit/bin:${PATH}
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Visit can also be used through a server running remotely on another machine. This server itself can be a serial compute engine or the frontend to a parallel one. To use Visit 1.4.5 with a remote server running on asap.cacr? do the following:
ssh
to connect from your local workstation to asap.cacr.caltech.edu
.
asap.cacr.caltech.edu
contains the above PATH
setting to allow the execution of visit
immediately after a login.
visit
as described above on your local workstation.
-nopty
in the foreground. With this option, any necessary password has to typed on the shell console from which the program is run. Without the option -nopty
Visit would display a separate window asking for passwords, but this feature is not functional on very recent Linux system. See the explanation under Trouble shooting. The option -nopty leads to a program hang, when given to a visit program running in the background (i.e. started with &), the moment a password is required. Only start the program as: visit -nopty
-nopty
Visit will display the Metadata server launch progress window immediately. If a password is necessary, you have to activate the original console window then and provide the password.
Host Profile
for asap.cacr.caltech.edu
as described above, but this time select under Advanced options
select Parse from SSH_CLIENT variable
and Specifiy SSH port=22
. As this profile will be stored on your local computer it will not interfer with any profile previously created directly in your account on asap.cacr.caltech.edu
.
Note: You may encounter difficulties with remote execution of Visit on asap
if your default shell on asap
is bash
. When bash
is configured as a symbolic link to sh
, as it is on asap
, the shell does not automatically process any user configuration files such as .profile
to set up the environment unless a special command-line flag is given to sh
. It appears that the ssh client used by Visit to launch remote commands does not know how to issue this option to sh
when it sends a command, so the command does not execute in the user's normal interactive environment. This causes the remote launch of the metadata server to fail. At this time, we have not discovered any workaround for this problem, other than to use a different shell such as csh
or tcsh
on the asap
machine.
The standard Visit 1.4.5 installation already contains Host profiles
for all current machines at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, especially for ALC, Thunder, and uP. I have been able to connect successively to all ASC machines at LLNL through the Visit interface under Linux and Windows by opening an IPA connection to my local system before. RalfDeiterding (4 Jan 2006)
In order to use this feature you have to modify all predefined Host profiles
as follows:
Host profile
you want to modify
Selected Profile
adjust your Username
appropriately for the remote machine.
Advanced options
select Specify SSH port
and put the same secret ssh-port number in here that you also use always when connecting to LLNL machines.
Advanced options
select Use local machine name
or use Specify manually
and put the full hostname or IP address of the local machine in here. With the setting Parse from SSH_CLIENT variable
the IP address of the VPN server, through which you are connecting, will be used otherwise as -host
for the remote Visit data server. In this case, no connection can be established.
Unblock
in the dialog box to allow the Visit program to access these ports or disable the firewall temporarily.
visit-config-open
. Copy the fields "HostProfile" for the machines you like to access into your local config for [USERNAME]
file.
asap.cacr.caltech.edu
.
puttygen
you can generate an ssh public/private key pair.
authorized_keys
file on asap
.
pageant
(PuTTY authentication agent) on your local PC to load the ssh key you have generated. When running, this tool will create an icon in the Windows XP taskbar. Click on it to add the required key.
putty
and connect to asap.cacr.caltech.edu
using your key.
pageant
is running with the appropriate key as described above.
qtssh.exe
(located in the Visit directory) which is compatible with pageant
. Without running pageant
in the background the command line window will display the message No supported authentication methods left to try!
ssh
to connect to the remote system.
visit/bin
in PATH
or specifying the visit directory for instance as -dir /usr/gapps/visit
under Additional Options
in the Host profile
). The message should be something like Running: vcl1.4.5 -host 131.215.145.30 -dir /usr/gapps/visit -timeout 480 -dir /usr/gapps/visit -port 5603
.
-host
has to be the local machine. Check this first, especially when using VPN.
-port
to your local machine. You should first verify that you can use ssh
to connect from the remote machine back into your local machine. But if the connection still fails, ask your administrators, if a connection via the specified port to your local system is actually possible. The relevant ports are 5601, 5602, 5603, ....
/dev/pty
to capture remote ssh
prompts, e.g. to ask for passwords. Make sure that these devices are functional on your local workstation (make sure that pty*
files exist under /dev
). If they don't (as on the most recent Fedora Core 3 by default, see error output in terminal window from which the local Visit was started), you have to run visit with the additional option -nopty
. In this case, all passwords have to typed in the console window from which visit -nopty
was launched. Note that the option -nopty
causes the program to hang when the program is running in the background and Visit doesn't have exclusive access to stdin.
ASAP has the latest binaries of VisIt. However if for some odd reason you insist you want to compile your own VisIt, then visit http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~slombey/asci/visit/
Remote host name | dspoe.sdsc.edu |
Additional options | -dir /gpfs/projects/asci/caltech/visit |
Parallel computation engine | YES |
Parallel launch method | poe |
Additional launcher arguments | -tasks_per_node 4 -euilib us -euidevice sn_all |
Partition/Pool | 1 |
Default number of processors | 4 |
Default number of nodes | 1 |
Default Time Limit | 30m |
Parse from SSH_CLIENT environment variable | YES |
Specify SSH port | 22 |
On DataStar the poe-parameter -tasks_per_node
is mandatory. Unfortunately, Visit does not consider it yet. Therefore, the user has make to sure himself that the relation [nodes]*[tasks_per_node]=[processors] is always satisfied. Interactive jobs typically run on 8-way nodes. A 16-way job would have to be specified as [nodes]=2, [tasks_per_node]=8, [processors]=16. In principle, poe doesn't require such a redundant specification, but it's currently unavoidable with Visit.
Remote host name | dslogin.sdsc.edu |
Additional options | -dir /gpfs/projects/asci/caltech/visit |
Parallel computation engine | NO |
Parse from SSH_CLIENT environment variable | YES |
Specify SSH port | 22 |
-- SantiagoLombeyda, RalfDeiterding - 14 Dec 2005
I | Attachment | Size | Date | Who | Comment |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
visit.04.addasap-mpi.png | 21.3 K | 26 Apr 2005 - 22:58 | SantiagoLombeyda | VisiIt? Add ASAP Paralell MPI Profile |