debian

Precompiled packages (Ubuntu)

Ubuntu
Known problems
- Cannot find MPI library

Ubuntu

For Debian and Ubuntu, OpenCFD works actively with the Debian (science) maintainers to improve the packaging, but also provides its own early-release Ubuntu repository For Linux newcomers, note Ubuntu is a Debian-derivative and thus its repositories invariably contain references to deb or debian.

OpenFOAM Ubuntu repository

To use the OpenFOAM early-release Ubuntu repository, you will need to add the signing key and the repository location(s) to your system. This typically only needs to be done once per distribution. The most convenient way is to use the installer script with one of these commands:

curl -s https://dl.openfoam.com/add-debian-repo.sh | sudo bash

wget -q -O - https://dl.openfoam.com/add-debian-repo.sh | sudo bash

This performs three things:

Adds the https://dl.openfoam.com/pubkey.gpg signing key for the repository
Adds repository information for a given distribution (eg, buster, focal, etc.):

deb [arch=amd64] https://dl.openfoam.com/repos/deb DIST main

Invokes apt-get update to refresh the repositories, which means you should immediately be able to install your preferred OpenFOAM package. For example,

sudo apt-get install openfoam2106-default

After migrating from one version to another, you can remove the old version with the usual commands. For example,

sudo apt-get autoremove openfoam2106-default

Supported versions and distributions

It is too early to establish a policy about which older OpenFOAM versions will be supported, but these should generally be covered by the regular Debian and Ubuntu updates (not the early release repo).

The goal of the early release repository is to support the newest Ubuntu LTS versions (allowing for a few months transition when a new LTS is released). The Ubuntu rolling releases will generally also be targeted, since these provide a good advanced warning of issues that may appear in the next LTS.

Sub-packages

Following the precompiled packages - sub-packages descriptions, the following represent typical installation commands:

User Group	Command
minimalist	`sudo apt-get install openfoam2106`
traditional	`sudo apt-get install openfoam2106-dev`
everything	`sudo apt-get install openfoam2106-default`

Installation locations

As documented in precompiled packages - locations.

After installation - using the OpenFOAM environment

As documented in precompiled packages - OpenFOAM environment.

Updates

After adding the repositories and installing a particular version of OpenFOAM, upgrade notifications should also appear (for example for openfoam1912):

External links

Direct integration in Debian is expected to further improve in the near future. Packages older than 2006 should be used with some caution. The OpenFOAM applications are located under /usr/bin and configuration files under /usr/share/openfoam/etc, which means that you will need to manually define the location of the OpenFOAM directory as follows:

export WM_PROJECT_DIR=/usr/share/openfoam

System	Links	Status	Notes
Debian (science)	package openfoam - see debian search and tracker	Maintained independently, with input from OpenCFD	older is "stable" (used for debian), newest is "testing" (used for ubuntu)
sourceforge repo	sourceforge repo	Actively maintained by OpenCFD	backend for https://dl.openfoam.com/repos/deb

Archived README contents that should appear on the sourceforge repo.
Archived installer script contents that should appear on dl.openfoam.com/

Known problems

Cannot find MPI library

This is a very strange issue in which the Ubuntu triggers fails to properly link the mpi libraries.

Contents for libopenmpi-dev exist:

$ dpkg-query -L libopenmpi-dev | grep libmpi

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/lib/libmpi.so
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/lib/libmpi_cxx.so
...

Reverse lookup is also correct:

$ dpkg-query -S /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/lib/libmpi.so

libopenmpi-dev:amd64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openmpi/lib/libmpi.so

Except that none of the links actually exist on the regular Ubuntu install (the docker install is OK for some unknown reason). It appears that the triggers for libopenmpi-dev might be run too soon.

The following brute-force method (there might be a cleaner way) seems to work to retrigger things properly.

$ sudo dpkg --remove --force-all libopenmpi-dev
$ sudo apt install libopenmpi-dev

After this all of the .so links exist as expected.