View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0002971OpenFOAMBugpublic2018-06-27 08:30
Reporterjoseph@n04-138.net Assigned Tochris  
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityalways
Status closedResolutionfixed 
PlatformOpenFOAM 5.0 in Docker ContainerOSUbuntuOS Version16.04 LTS
Summary0002971: OpenFoam Docker with pvserver to remote paraview
DescriptionI have been using native OpenFOAM on Ubuntu server for several years. We just added a few more large servers and have transitioned to use OpenFOAM in a Docker Container. The host is a 32 processor / 256GB RAM host with lots of disk space. I have installed OpenFOAM Docker per the instructions. I have run the demos and they all work fine. We do not have X-11 on the server - it is a compute host only.

The issue I am having is traversing out of the docker container to remote hosts with pvserver and paraview. My analysis configuration is a Mac workstation with native paraview thorough a VPN to the server (accessed via ssh only) and then into pvserver running in the docker container. I have read various sites on reverse connection, server port, ... but can not find the correct way to go across the VPN and through to a the docker client with pvserver.

It seems like it should be trivial but I can't find a solution. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Joe.
Steps To ReproduceOpen OpenFOAM docker session and run pvserver with various options. Attempt client server connection from remote paraview session.
Additional InformationUsing Mac OSX native version of paraview 5.4.0 and 5.0 version of OpenFOAM docker from the download site.
Tagsdocker, paraview, pvserver, ubuntu

Activities

joseph@n04-138.net

2018-06-05 01:06

reporter   ~0009702

Last edited: 2018-06-05 08:41

I was able to get traverse the network with the following command in the docker container:

pvserver -rc --client-host=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX --server-port=PPPP --use-offscreen-rendering

where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address and PPPP is the port number.

The server side gives the following error:

Connecting to client (reverse connection requested)...
Connection URL: csrc://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:PPPP
ERROR: In /home/ubuntu/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-dev/ParaView-5.4.0/ParaViewCore/ClientServerCore/Core/vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager.cxx, line 315
vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager (0x12f2900): Failed to connect to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:PPPP

ERROR: In /home/ubuntu/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-dev/ParaView-5.4.0/ParaViewCore/ClientServerCore/Core/vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager.cxx, line 328
vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager (0x12f2900):
**********************************************************************
Connection failed during handshake. This can happen for the following reasons:
 1. Connection dropped during the handshake.
 2. vtkSocketCommunicator::GetVersion() returns different values on the
    two connecting processes (Current value: 100).
 3. ParaView handshake strings are different on the two connecting
    processes (Current value: paraview.5.4.renderingbackend.opengl).
**********************************************************************

However, on the paraview client I get the following error:

ERROR: In /Users/kitware/buildbot-slave/8275bd07/source-paraview/ParaViewCore/ClientServerCore/Core/vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager.cxx, line 413
vtkTCPNetworkAccessManager (0x60000046fd40):
**********************************************************************
Connection failed during handshake. This can happen for the following reasons:
 1. Connection dropped during the handshake.
 2. vtkSocketCommunicator::GetVersion() returns different values on the
    two connecting processes (Current value: 100).
 3. ParaView handshake strings are different on the two connecting
    processes (Current value: paraview.5.4.renderingbackend.opengl2).
**********************************************************************

I am not sure if this is a compilation error or if it has something to do with the system attempting to render on the headless server. Any thoughts?

chris

2018-06-05 08:45

manager   ~0009703

@joseph@n04-138.net I removed the IP address and port number from your last message to keep that information private to you.

joseph@n04-138.net

2018-06-06 20:16

reporter   ~0009713

Another update. I received the following feedback from paraview support:

"The bad news is that it looks like your pvserver was built with the OpenGL backend (Current value: paraview.5.4.renderingbackend.opengl) while your client was built with the OpenGL2 backend (Current value: paraview.5.4.renderingbackend.opengl2). These need to both be built with the same backend. OpenGL2 is the modern backend, so I would recommend rebuilding pvserver with the OpenGL2 backend and trying again."

The suggestion is to rebuild paraview/pvserver ... in the docker distribution from openfoam.org so that it is compatible with the standard OSX paraview releases.

Just to verify I installed the Mac docker openfoam version on my Mac and ran it locally. I used openfoam5-macos -p and then ran pvserver in the docker instantiation on the Mac. When I linked back to the Mac native paraview it gave me the same OpenGL version error.

As far as I can tell the paraview/pvserver in the standard docker release of openfoam5 does use a different version of OpenGL.

Are there any suggestions on how to recompile paraview/pvserver in the docker container to use the OpenGL2 version rather than the version it was compiled with?

Thanks - Joe.

chris

2018-06-07 08:52

manager   ~0009717

The Docker build uses the paraviewopenfoam54 packs for Ubuntu:
https://openfoam.org/download/5-0-ubuntu/

Those packs are built with OpenGL because we find it provides an installation of ParaView that runs under the broadest range of deployments, e.g. on a local machine, via remote desktop, with hardware rendering, with software rendering.

With OpenGL2, we find there are version incompatibilities between ParaView libraries and system-installed libraries on Ubuntu (e.g. 16.04) such as VTK, OSMesa and swrast.

You could build OpenFOAM and ParaView from sources:
https://openfoam.org/download/source/
... which is configured by default to use OpenGL2. But I would sound a note of caution because of the server relying on software rendering, which involves the issue of library incompatibilities.

For post-processing large parallel data sets, we look for solutions that do not require massive GBs of RAM for visualisation that vastly exceeds the need for running the CFD. We therefore concentrate on maintaining and developing the automated, parallelised post-processing tools which can generate VTK files of patch surfaces, isosurfaces, cutting planes and streamlines which can then be processed cheaply in serial in ParaView:

https://cfd.direct/openfoam/user-guide/post-processing-cli
(see 6.2.1.11 Visualisation tools)

chris

2018-06-27 08:30

manager   ~0009835

ParaView compilation query. No more help can be provided from the OpenFOAM team.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2018-06-04 16:37 joseph@n04-138.net New Issue
2018-06-04 16:37 joseph@n04-138.net Tag Attached: docker
2018-06-04 16:37 joseph@n04-138.net Tag Attached: paraview
2018-06-04 16:37 joseph@n04-138.net Tag Attached: pvserver
2018-06-04 16:37 joseph@n04-138.net Tag Attached: ubuntu
2018-06-05 01:06 joseph@n04-138.net Note Added: 0009702
2018-06-05 08:41 chris Note Edited: 0009702
2018-06-05 08:45 chris Note Added: 0009703
2018-06-06 20:16 joseph@n04-138.net Note Added: 0009713
2018-06-07 08:52 chris Note Added: 0009717
2018-06-27 08:30 chris Assigned To => chris
2018-06-27 08:30 chris Status new => closed
2018-06-27 08:30 chris Resolution open => fixed
2018-06-27 08:30 chris Note Added: 0009835