1 Introduction

This page is dedicated to explaining how to install OpenFOAM in:

Community ENTerprise Operating System, aka CentOS.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, aka RHEL.
Scientific Linux, aka SL.

In theory, all of the above follow the same versioning. Therefore, at the time this page was first written, RHEL, CentOS and SL were all at version 6.4.

Both SL and CentOS derive from RHEL, but CentFOAM is what inspired this page. Therefore, before even trying to follow the instructions on this page, try first CentFOAM.

Last but not least, RHEL uses Fedora as their bleeding edge Linux Distribution, where they test new features. This leads to very close similarities between them, e.g. RHEL 6.3 is very similar to Fedora 14; which means that whatever you can build on Fedora 14, you should also be able to build on RHEL 6.3!

If you do not yet feel comfortable using Linux, then perhaps you better first read the page Working with the Shell and train a bit with the shell/terminal environments, so you can have a better perception of the steps shown below.

2 Copy-Paste steps

A few notes before you start copy-pasting:

Lines that start with # don't have to be copy-pasted. They are just comments to let you know what's going on.
One wrong character is enough for breaking this guide, so make sure you can read the characters properly or that the installed language system does not break the copied characters!

2.1 CentOS 6.4

Note: this was tested with the normal DVD of CentOS 6.4, installed in a virtual machine.

Discussion thread where you can ask questions about these steps: Error installing OpenFOAM 2.2.0 on CentOS 6.4

Steps:

Switch to root mode (administrator) and install the necessary packages (run one line at a time):

su -
yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' 
yum install openmpi openmpi-devel qt-devel zlib-devel texinfo
 
#This one is useful, but not crucial
yum upgrade
 
exit

Start a new terminal. This is because you'll need a fully refreshed shell.

Download and unpack (here you can copy-paste all in single go):

#OpenFOAM downloading and installation
cd ~
mkdir OpenFOAM
cd OpenFOAM
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/foam/OpenFOAM-2.2.0.tgz?use_mirror=mesh" -O OpenFOAM-2.2.0.tgz
wget "http://downloads.sourceforge.net/foam/ThirdParty-2.2.0.tgz?use_mirror=mesh" -O ThirdParty-2.2.0.tgz
 
tar xzf OpenFOAM-2.2.0.tgz 
tar xzf ThirdParty-2.2.0.tgz

For building OpenFOAM itself, it depends on whether you have installed the i386 or x86_64 architecture of CentOS/SL/RHEL. To check this, run:

uname -m

Now, accordingly:

For i386:

#forcefully load Open-MPI into the environment
module load openmpi-i386
 
#here you can change 4 to the number of cores you've got
source $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/bashrc WM_NCOMPPROCS=4 foamCompiler=ThirdParty \
WM_COMPILER=Gcc45 WM_MPLIB=SYSTEMOPENMPI WM_ARCH_OPTION=32
 
echo "module load openmpi-i386" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "source $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/bashrc $FOAM_SETTINGS" >> $HOME/.bashrc
 
#Note: these two lines have been reported as needed for
#properly working on a clean installation
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/openmpi/bin 
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/openmpi/bin' >> $HOME/.bashrc

For x86_64:

#forcefully load Open-MPI into the environment
module load openmpi-x86_64       
 
#here you can change 4 to the number of cores you've got
source $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/bashrc WM_NCOMPPROCS=4 foamCompiler=ThirdParty \
WM_COMPILER=Gcc45 WM_MPLIB=SYSTEMOPENMPI
 
echo "module load openmpi-x86_64" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "source $HOME/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/bashrc $FOAM_SETTINGS" >> $HOME/.bashrc
 
#Note: these two lines have been reported as needed for
#properly working on a clean installation
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib64/openmpi/bin 
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib64/openmpi/bin' >> $HOME/.bashrc

Note: You probably will see a message similar to this one and it's meant to do so until we've built the custom Gcc version:

Warning in /home/user/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/etc/config/settings.sh:
    Cannot find /home/user/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-2.2.0/platforms/linux64/gcc-4.5.2 installation.
    Please install this compiler version or if you wish to use the system compiler,
    change the 'foamCompiler' setting to 'system'

Now we'll have to get all of the scripts we'll need to build GCC and binutils (because OpenFOAM 2.2 requires at least GCC 4.5 and CentOS only provides GCC 4.4):

cd $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR
wget "http://www.openfoam.com/mantisbt/file_download.php?file_id=102&type=bug" -O getGcc
wget --no-check-certificate "https://raw.github.com/wyldckat/ThirdParty-2.0.x/binutils/makeBinutils"
wget --no-check-certificate "https://raw.github.com/wyldckat/ThirdParty-2.0.x/binutils/getBinutils"
chmod +x get* make*
 
#we need to disable the ''multilib'' functionality, since we won't need to build both 32 and 64bit architectures.
sed -i -e 's=\(--with-system-zlib \)=\1--disable-multilib =' makeGcc

Now let's get and build Gcc 4.5.2 and company:
```
./getGcc gcc-4.5.2
./makeGcc gcc-4.5.2 gmp-5.0.1 mpfr-2.4.2 mpc-0.8.1 > mkgcc.log 2>&1
wmSET $FOAM_SETTINGS
```
If it still gives you the same error message from #3, then something went wrong...

Now let's get and build a custom GNU Binutils:

./getBinutils
./makeBinutils gcc-4.5.2 > mkbinutils.log 2>&1

Now let's build OpenFOAM:

#Go into OpenFOAM's main source folder
cd $WM_PROJECT_DIR
 
# This next command will take a while... somewhere between 30 minutes to 3-6 hours.
./Allwmake > make.log 2>&1
 
#Run it a second time for getting a summary of the installation
./Allwmake > make.log 2>&1

To check if everything went well:

#Check if icoFoam is working
icoFoam -help
 
#Edit the file "make.log" and check if there are any error messages
#Example:
gedit make.log
 
#Create a tarball in case you've seen any errors (it's the first error that matters)
#or if you don't understand the output
#and attach the file "make.log.tar.gz" to a post in the designated thread
tar -czf make.log.tar.gz make.log

CentOS 6.3 comes with CMake 2.6.4, but ParaView 3.12.0 needs a one of the versions from the more recent CMake 2.8.x series. Therefore, we'll need to do a custom build:

cd $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR
wget "http://www.openfoam.org/mantisbt/file_download.php?file_id=143&type=bug" -O getCmake
chmod +x getCmake
./getCmake
./makeCmake
wmSET $FOAM_SETTINGS

Now, in order to build ParaView 3.12.0 that comes with OpenFOAM:

cd $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR
./makeParaView -qmake $(which qmake-qt4)
 
cd $FOAM_UTILITIES/postProcessing/graphics/PV3Readers 
wmSET $FOAM_SETTINGS
./Allwclean 
./Allwmake

Now you can go read the User Guide: official OpenFOAM User Guide

Discussion thread where you can ask questions about these steps: Error installing OpenFOAM 2.2.0 on CentOS 6.4

Installation/Linux/OpenFOAM-2.2.0/CentOS SL RHEL

1 Introduction

Contents

2 Copy-Paste steps

2.1 CentOS 6.4