Setting up your system

Setting up your system#

This section aids you in preparing and setting up your system to run DALES. We assume you are using a UNIX-based system and are familiar with basic terminal commands. First, we will cover the basic requirements to use DALES, which are minimally required. Second, a list of optional librariers/packages is given that will enable optimal use of DALES. Finally, we will tell how you to obtain the latest, tested version of the code (i.e., the “main branch”).

Requirements#

DALES has a few general requirements for installation and usage:

  • Fortran compiler (e.g., gfortran)

  • MPI implementation (for multi-cpu runs, OpemnMPI and MPICH have been tested)

  • NetCDF4 libraries (for output/input)

  • CMake

  • Make (to build the code)

  • FFTW library (for the Poisson solver. Optional but highly recommended.)

  • HYPRE library (alternative Poisson solver. Optional.)

These requirements can be easily installed on most UNIX-based systems via a package manager. For example, on ubuntu via the standard package manager

sudo apt install cmake

On MacOS, a standard way to install packages is via homebrew

brew install cmake

When using high-performance conputing (HPC) infrastructures, these requirements may already be pre-installed. Many HPC infrastructures employ sets of software modules in which case the requiments often have to be loaded in. A list of available modules on the system is then given by the following command:

module avail

Available modules can subsequently be loaded via the load command, for example, loading cmake via:

module load cmake

Optional libraries/packages#

The folling list of libraries/packages can (probably: will) make your use of DALES easier:

  • Python + numpy + matplotlib (to generate input files and/or analyse output)

  • Python-netcdf4 library (to read in netcdf4 output)

  • CDO (easily merge and operate on multiple netcdf4 files. Version >= 2.0.6.)

  • ncview (interactive netCDF viewer)

To use ncview on windows you might need to download VcXsrv, and on OSX you need XQuartz.

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