CAELinux 2013: development and testing Posted by jcugnoni - 06 Apr :45

Transcription

1 CAELinux 2013: development and testing Posted by jcugnoni - 06 Apr :45 Hi everyone, after a long break in 2012 without much development of CAELinux, I am restarting the development of a new release, entitled CAElinux 2013 I am really sorry for this long wait but I had to put all my CAELinux activities on hold as I was really too busy. Also all my apologies to all those of you who send me tons of s that I did not even had time to answer.. The goal of this next release is not only to develop a new version but also to move from a centralized development (=me) to a more community driven development, or at least decentralized, modular and distributed development. The base idea is to use Deb packages to install all software used in CAELinux which means that several people can contribute, either by adding a new package, or updating/fixing bugs or just testing and reporting errors. Moreover, for the users, it will mean that the same distribution can be kept and updated progressively as new packages are added in the servers. This will also allow to add other software packages that would not fit on th 4.7Gb DVD image normally. Finally, this will also allow all Ubuntu users (maybe also other derivatives of Debian) to add CAE software from CAELinux and customize their existing installation without having to dual boot. CAELinux 2013 remains based on Ubuntu LTS on x86_64 architecture so many software are already packages either in official Debian or Ubuntu repositories or in PPAs. To maximize efficiency, CAELinux was using as many pre-built packages as possible so only a few codes need to be compiled from source in the end. The development steps are as follows: 0) Package selection: In progress, to publish I have not yet established a complete list of packages, but will concentrate on those who were already included in previous releases and not available elsewhere (or are available but with outdated versions). I will setup a wiki page to track the list of packages and their status (like for example to compile from source, or to install from PPA XYZ or to update to newer release X.Y.Z). 1) Developing a tools to simplify package construction. Done, to publish 1 / 7

2 Actually, I have looked in details on how to create Debian packages in the official way... to me it looks really difficult for large packages like Code-Aster or for software distributed mostly in binary form like Salome-Meca. So the idea is to use an easier, less automated that consists in manually (or automatically if you want) compile the binaries in /opt as I always did for previous releases and then to package these binaries with information about dependencies in a traditional deb file. To simplify this task, I have written a simple shell script called builddeb.sh. For more information and example on how to use it, I will write a wiki page soon. 2) Write, test & use automatic or semi-automatic compilation scripts In progress I already have a fully automated script for Elmer and for Aster with MPI+PETSC+OpenBLAS. I will upload these scripts in the Wiki as well (todo: create a Development page for that purpose...). I also maintain some archives of the package sources and important docs to use to compile these codes. I will also publish this on a FTP server. 3) Build binary deb packages : In progress, TO TEST These scripts along with the builddeb.sh tool are used to produce Deb packages to automate installation, dependency management and future updates / removal. 4) setup a package repository for stable and testing (will be used to upgrade packages) TO TEST I need to find a simple and efficient way of managing a package repository that would also allow other contributors to upload packages (after validation). Having a stable and testing repository sections will allow many users to try packages before they are officially released. The main question for me now is to find the right software or web service to handle this task. Also, the repository will generate a lot of traffic as some packages are very big (up to 1.3Gb for Salome-Meca for example!), so a serious server will be required. For what I know Launchpad is not a good solution as it does not allow to upload pre-buit binary packages... so we need something more flexible. If you have any suggestion on that point, just let me know... 5) use the packages to build a full blown distribution and distribute the ISO image. To do Once the repository is set up, I will assemble an ISO image and fine tune it. I will try to automate all the customization process and package it as a "meta-package" that will then allow anyone to re-generate a CAELinux installation from scratch. The goal is that CAELinux 2013 will be the last release that I develop only myself, and that the next releases will be much easier to develop and update! This represents quite a big change to the way I 2 / 7

3 used to develop the distribution but now that the process has been established it is progressing well. At the moment, I have already packages for OpenFOAM and related tools (HelyxOS, Engrid, Discretizer), Salome-Meca and Code-Aster 11.3 MPI. I will upload these packages for testing as soon as I find a good way to distribute those packages. I may setup a temporary repository just for testing. Let me know what you think about it. And all my apologies if I did not / do not answer to s... my time is too limited at the moment so I have to focus on the bare essential: developing the new release... Cheers Joel Cugnon (aka admin) Posted by jcugnoni - 16 Dec :56 Dear All, I have a Great news: (especially considering that 2013 is close to an end ) FINALLY I have managed to finish the packaging of all the core software for CAELinux 2013 AND to build a first ISO image for testing!! Moreover, for those of you who would like to transform an standard Ubuntu install into CAELinux, I have written an automated installation script called CAELinuxify-Me.sh that does the job (under testing, so be carefull..) You can find all this here: Here is a short description of the content of this BETA 1 release: PLEASE NOTE THAT CAELINUX 2013 IS IN THE BETA PHASE I.E FOR TESTING PURPOSE ONLY 3 / 7

4 In the present folder, you will find the current beta version of CAELinux 2013 ISO image and an automated installation script called CAELinuxify-Me.sh CAELinux2013-beta1.iso: This is an ISO image of a bootable DVD (can also go on USB flash disks) based on Xubuntu AMD64 with all latest updates and all CAELinux core packages installed: Salome-Meca , Code-Aster 11.3 MPI, Calculix 2.5 Multithreaded, Elmer 6.2 MPI, Code-Saturne 3.0 MPI, OpenFOAM with Engrid, HelyxOS and Discretizer front-ends and many many more. A key novelty of this new release is to provide a complete CAD-CAM solution with Freecad, PyCam (improved version 0.6), OpenSCAM as well as all tools needed to do 3D printing (OpenSCAD, Meshlab, Cura) and PCB design and milling (GEDA, Kicad, Pcb2Gcode, CadPy, DXF2GCode, Inkscape Gcodetools). This is the first beta release and it may still contain a few bugs (please report on forums or bugtracker at caelinux.sf.net). CAELinuxify-Me.sh This shell script transforms an existing Ubuntu AMD64 (or any compatible derivative) into a full CAELinux 2013 installation. Be CAREFULL with this script as it has not been extensivelly tested and does not come with an UNDO function... However, its behaviour is simple to understand and so you might be able to fix issues manually. What this script does is fairly straightforward: 1) add CAELinux 2013 testing repository, 2) install 3rd party repositories (OpenFOAM, cae-team ppa, freecad ppa..) 3) run apt-get install with a LONG list of packages (about 6Gb download, 20Gb installed!!) Please note that by default, the script will also modify the theme of the login screen and change the look and feel for new users. This script can be edited to narrow the selection of packages or disable some options. Once again, this is intendend for testing purpose at the present stage (but it was used to generate the ISO image above). 4 / 7

5 Posted by colimata - 17 Dec :48 That's great news. Your work is highly appreciated. Thank you so much! Florian Posted by mn Dec :35 Is there any posibility to include not 100% free, but freeware software into CAE Linux? I'm thinking about: - Draftsight - Z88 Aurora v2 - SMath Studio - for Mathcad clone there's also open source Miramath, but i haven't ever tried it. Posted by beerboy - 03 Jan :38 Greetings! I have some problems running the CAELinuxify-Me.sh script. I get the following error. Setting up caelinux-theme-img (0.0.1)... sed: can't read /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing caelinux-theme-img (--configure): 5 / 7

6 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Setting up caelinux-addons (0.1a-cae2013)... /usr/share/applications/saturne-wizard.desktop: warning: value "Code-Saturne Wizard" for key "Comment" in group "Desktop Entry" looks redundant with value "Code-Saturne Wizard" of key "Name" /usr/share/applications/simplefoam-wizard.desktop: warning: value "OpenFOAM Wizard" for key "Comment" in group "Desktop Entry" looks redundant with value "OpenFOAM Wizard" of key "Name" Setting up caelinux-xfce-skel (0.0.2)... Setting up cam-tools (0.1b-cae2013)... Errors were encountered while processing: caelinux-theme-img E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Error, exiting... I am not a very good linux person, so all assistance is greatly appreciated. How can I fix this? Thanks! Josh Posted by jcugnoni - 03 Jan :02 Hi Josh This is not a critical issue as it seems that it only failed to install the background image for the login screen. All the rest should be functional normally. However it is not nice to see an error like that. Could you please let me know which system you are running? Is it Xubuntu or Ubuntu or other? Joel 6 / 7

7 Posted by beerboy - 03 Jan :44 Hello, Joel! Thanks for responding so quickly. I am using Ubuntu Thanks! Josh 7 / 7