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Interactive Visualization on Phoenix

This tutorial outlines how to perform interactive remove visualization on GATechs Phoenix cluster. Using remote visualization allows for the visualization of much larger simulations interactively, without the need for Paraview's batch mode

Step 1 - Setting up your Environment

Begin by downloading the .zip file here (https://gatech.box.com/s/1diud4lgequvuie5fg2ac6hcvoelndu5). This file contains two things

  • A bash script to automate the job submission process and provide instructions for remote connection.

  • A prebuilt Paraview 5.11 binary

Place the file paceParview.zip in you scratch direction on Phoenix and unzip is using unzip paceParaview.zip. Enter the new directory paceParaview and run tar -xvf ParaView-5.11.0-egl-MPI-Linux-Python3.9-x86_64.tar.gz to decompress the compiled binary. Now that you have the binary on Phoenix, you'll need to download Paraview 5.11 on your local machine. Paraview binaries can be downloaded here (https://www.paraview.org/download/). Make sure to select v5.11 from the version drop down bar and install a 5.11.0 version of Paraview.

Step 2 - Customizing the Bash Script

While all of the options for the bash script could be passed as command line arguments, it saves time to hard code certain options that are unlikely to change. The following is a list of required and suggested updates to make to pace-paraview-server.

  • (Optional) Update line 4 to customize the job name that will show up in the scheduler

  • (Required) Update line 6 to point towards the location of you Paraview bin directory

  • (Optional) Update line 51 to reflect the default account you'll use to run Paraview jobs

  • (Optional) Update line 52 to reflect the default wall time requested for your job

Step 3 - Running pace-paraview-server

Before running pace-paraview-server for the first time, you'll need to update its permissions by running chmod u+x pace-paraview-server in your command line. Once this has been done, you can run ./pace-paraview-server with the following options:

  • --account specifies the charge account to use for the job. If you updated line 51 of pace-paraview-server to reflect a default account, this option is optional, otherwise it is required.

  • --nodes specifies the number of nodes to request (default 1)

  • --mem specifies the memory per node to request (default is to request all memory)

  • --gres specifies the GPU resources to request. These instructions have only been verified to work with --gres gpu:V100:2.

  • --time specifies the time limit for your job. This option is optional and defaults to whatever is set on line 52 of pace-paraview-server.

Once you run ./pace-paraview-server <options>, it'll take a bit to start up. In the meantime, you'll see the below message:

Submitted batch job <job #>
Waiting for ParaView server to start. This may take several minutes  ...

When it's done initializing, you should see a dialogue with some recommended next steps numbered 1-4. Below is a slightly altered version of that dialogue:

  1. Create the appropriate port forwarding for your local ParaView session to connect with.
  • On your local machine, run the following from a terminal where nodeIdentifier is the remote node running the ParaView server process (given in the output of the batch script) and paceSystemIdentifier is the name of the PACE system (however this is configured with your .ssh/config).
  • This terminal session must not be killed for the duration of your ParaView session as it maintains the port forwarding.
    • ssh -L 8722:<nodeIdentifier>:53723 <paceSystemIdentifier>
  1. Once you have Paraview5.11.0 open on your machine, select file -> Connect.. to open the remote connection dialogue box.
  • If you've already set up the pace connection, simply double-click the existing configuration.
  • If you have not yet set up the pace connection, click Add Server. This will bring up a new dialogue box where you can specify a configuration name and set the Port to 8722. Once this is done, click configure and then save on the next dialogue box.