The following tar-zipped gtgz source packs are available for download.
| Pack | File | md5sum |
| OpenFOAM | OpenFOAM-2.0.1.gtgz | 0a9dfa42282a5e629523b70e2544c773 |
| Third-Party | ThirdParty-2.0.1.gtgz | 4b91af77bdbd3a87d91eeccb0f596f59 |
The user should choose a directory location to unpack these files, which will become the installation directory of OpenFOAM. If the installation is for a single user only, or if the user does not have root access to the machine, we would recommend the installation directory is $HOME/OpenFOAM (i.e. a directory OpenFOAM in the user’s home directory). If the installer has root permissions and the installation is for more than one user, one of the ‘standard’ locations can be used, e.g. /usr/local/OpenFOAM, /opt/OpenFOAM, or just /opt.
After the installation directory is chosen (and, if necessary, created), simply copy the 2 source pack files into the directory and unpack using tar xzf <filename>, e.g. from the installation directory:
OpenFOAM is developed and tested on Linux, but should work with other POSIX systems. OpenFOAM-2.0.1 and ThirdParty-2.0.1 have been tested on the following Linux distributions:
Dependent packages required for Ubuntu can be installed by executing the following command in a terminal:
System versions of the OpenMPI and Scotch libraries can also be installed for Ubuntu, rather than having to compile them from sources:
Dependent packages required for OpenSuSE can be installed by executing the following commands in a terminal:
OpenFOAM-2.0.1 also builds on many other and older Linux distributions but the ParaView-3.10.1 version supplied in ThirdParty requires cmake-2.8.2 or higher and Qt-4.6.2 or higher which can be obtained from various repositories for many Linux distributions. To check your system setup, you can execute the foamSystemCheck script, described in “Checking the System” (below).
The environment variable settings are contained in files in an OpenFOAM-2.0.1/etc directory in the OpenFOAM release. e.g. for the case where the installation is in $HOME/OpenFOAM, in:
then type “source $HOME/.cshrc” in the current terminal window
OpenFOAM may also be installed in alternative locations. However, the installation directory should be network available (e.g. NFS) if parallel calculations are planned.
The environment variable FOAM_INST_DIR can be used to find and source the appropriate resource file. Here is a bash/ksh/sh example:
To check your system is ready to build the sources, execute the foamSystemCheck script (in the OpenFOAM-2.0.1/bin directory). If any critical software is missing, or needs updating to a newer version, please contact the system administrator to install the required software before proceeding to the build.
In particular your system will need to include a recent version of gcc (check with gcc --version, we recommend gcc-4.4.? but gcc-4.3.? is sufficient). If the installed version is not recent source pack for newer versions are available from http://gcc.gnu.org/.
To build OpenFOAM you will also need the flex software installed on your system. If that is missing (type flex --version to check), then install it.
Go to the top-level source directory $WM_PROJECT_DIR and execute the top-level build script ./Allwmake. In principle this will build everything, but if problems occur with the build order it may be necessary to update the environment variables and re-execute ./Allwmake.
If you experience difficulties with building the source-pack, or your platform is not currently supported, please contact software support to arrange a support contract and we will do the port and maintain it for future releases.
OpenFOAM uses wmake to perform compilation (building, linking) of its C++ source code into executable code. wmake is called from the Allwmake scripts during the initial build of the complete OpenFOAM project but can be executed directly to update the compilation of any of the OpenFOAM components:
wmake comes with a parallel compilation scheduler, wmakeScheduler, which spawns compilation jobs on free machines. These machines need password-less network access, e.g. using SSH, and a network mounted installation, e.g. using NFS.
wmakeScheduler is set up with environment variables:
For example to build on 1 processor of machine aaa and 4 processors of bbb:
Paraview is the third-party software that we provide for graphical post-processing in OpenFOAM. It’s compilation is automated using a script called makeParaView in the ThirdParty-2.0.1 directory. Installation of Paraview 3.10.1 requires a version of QT that is 3.6.2 or newer and cmake which is 2.8.2 or newer, so again make sure that this is on your system.
To install Paraview, execute the following:
To check your installation setup, execute the foamInstallationTest script (in the OpenFOAM-2.0.1/bin directory). If no problems are reported, proceed to getting started with OpenFOAM; otherwise, go back and check you have installed the software correctly and/or contact your system administrator.
Create a project directory within the $HOME/OpenFOAM directory named <USER>-2.0.1 (e.g. chris-2.0.1 for user chris and OpenFOAM version 2.0.1) and create a directory named run within it, e.g. by typing:
We appreciate that bugs in OpenFOAM are reported so we can fix them. Please refer to the OpenFOAM bugs pages to report bugs.