Installation/ParaView/FAQ

1 Introduction

This page aims to collect answers for frequently asked questions how to build ParaView, when using OpenFOAM's own makeParaView script(s). Feel free to extend this page with more details.

2 Error message: "GL version 2.1 with the gpu_shader4 extension is not supported by your graphics driver"

Version

ParaView 5.0.0 and newer

Reason

This has a higher chance of occurring inside a virtual machine, rather than in a real machine. As of ParaView 5.0.0, using OpenGL2 has become the default and this version of OpenGL isn't fully supported by many graphics drivers that are used inside virtual machines... unless the 3D graphics acceleration feature is turned on and a few adjustments are made.

For more details about this feature, see the at Kitware's blog the post New OpenGL Rendering in VTK. It was already available as an optional build setting in ParaView 4.4.0.

Solution

The solution is to build ParaView with the option {{{1}}}, which can be done by running makeParaView with this additional option:

./makeParaView VTK_RENDERING_BACKEND=OpenGL

Or within the context of an existing installation instructions, for example installing OpenFOAM+ v1606+ in CentOS 6.7, this command:

./makeParaView -qmake $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR/platforms/$WM_ARCH$WM_COMPILER/qt-4.8.6/bin/qmake -mpi -python > log.makePV 2>&1

becomes this:

./makeParaView -qmake $WM_THIRD_PARTY_DIR/platforms/$WM_ARCH$WM_COMPILER/qt-4.8.6/bin/qmake -mpi -python VTK_RENDERING_BACKEND=OpenGL > log.makePV 2>&1