Installing OpenFOAM 1.7.x on openSUSE 11.4

The installation of OpenFOAM^® 1.7.x on the freshly released openSUSE 11.4 is straighforward, however some care is required to have a working ParaView. The ThirdParty package provided with OpenFOAM ships ParaView 3.8.0, which does not successfully build with Qt 4.7.

The steps for the installation on openSUSE 11.4 – 64 bit are summarized as follows:

• Use YaST to install
  • the C/C++ development pattern in YaST
  • cmake
  • libqt4-devel (required to build paraview)
  • libQtWebKit-devel (required to build paraview)
  • libQtAssistantClient4
  • flex
  • git
• Create a directory called OpenFOAM in your home directory
  • mkdir ~/OpenFOAM
• Enter the OpenFOAM directory
  • cd ~/OpenFOAM
• Download the source code: with the command:
  • git clone http://github.com/OpenCFD/OpenFOAM-1.7.x.git
• Download both the OpenFOAM and ThirdParty packages from here and save them in your ~/OpenFOAM directory
• Extract the ThirdParty-1.7.1.gtgz package with the command
  • tar xzf ThirdParty-1.7.1.gtgz
• Rename the directory ThirdParty-1.7.1 to ThirdParty-1.7.x with:
  • mv ThirdParty-1.7.1 ThirdParty-1.7.x
• Enter the directory ThirdParty-1.7.x
• Remove the directory paraview-3.8.0
• Download ParaView 3.10.0 from here and save it in the ThirdParty-1.7.x directory
• Extract the content of the paraview .zip file in the same directory
• Rename the directory ParaView-3.10.0 to paraview-3.10.0
• Open the file ~/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-1.7.x/etc/apps/paraview3/bashrc in a text editor
• Search for: ParaView_VERSION, and modify that line (should be line 54) so that it reads:
  • ParaView_VERSION=3.10.0
• Save the file and exit the editor.
• Open your ~/.bashrc file in a text editor and add the line:
  • . $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-1.7.x/etc/bashrc

  and source your ~/.bashrc file with the command: source ~/.bashrc

• Enter the OpenFOAM-1.7.0 directory with the command:
  • cd $FOAM_INST_DIR/OpenFOAM-1.7.x
• Compile OpenFOAM with the command:
  • ./Allwmake
• Build Paraview with the following commands:
  • cd $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR
  • ./Allclean
  • ./makeParaView
  • The build will fail at the Install stage because ParaViewLibraryDepends.cmake is not found. To solve this problem
    • cd ~/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-1.7.x/platforms/build-linux64Gcc/paraview-3.10.0/
    • Edit cmake_install.cmake
    • Comment the line containing ParaViewLibraryDepends.cmake (comments are inserted with #)
    • Save the file
    • Execute: cd $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR
    • Execute: ./makeParaView -no-config -no-make -install
    • This should install paraview properly for OpenFOAM
• Rebuild the PV3FoamReader as follows:
  • cd $FOAM_UTILITIES/postProcessing/graphics/PV3FoamReader
  • ./Allwclean
  • ./Allwmake

At this point, OpenFOAM should be successfully built, together with paraview, and paraFoam should work properly. You can test it on the icoFoam tutorial.

This offering is not approved or endorsed by OpenCFD Limited, the producer of the OpenFOAM software and owner of the OPENFOAM® and OpenCFD® trade marks. Alberto Passalacqua is not associated to OpenCFD Ltd.