Installing OpenFOAM on the LUMI supercomputer using EasyBuild

This guide explains how to compile OpenFOAM using EasyBuild on the LUMI supercomputer. It is explained how to install both the Foundation and ESI version of OpenFOAM, i.e., OpenFOAM-9 and OpenFOAM v2106, respectively. Should you need any other versions you may use one of the existing EasyBuild files and modify as needed. The people at LUMI keep a GitHub repo with the files, which serve as excellent starting points.

Throughout this guide, <project_id> refers to your project ID allocated to you by LUMI (commonly includes "project_"). In my case the <project_id> is "project_465000092". Go ahead and export your own project id:

export project_id=project_465000092

1. Prepare Environment

1a) First, set the EBU_USER_PREFIX variable. To make it permanent, run:

echo "export EBU_USER_PREFIX=/scratch/$project_id/EasyBuild" >> $HOME/.bashrc

1b) Reload the shell:

source $HOME/.bashrc

2. Compile and load OpenFOAM

In this step, we will install OpenFOAM-v2312. The procedure is easily adapted to other OpenFOAM versions.

Load required modules:

module load LUMI/23.09 partition/C EasyBuild-user

Next, search for and list the available OpenFOAM versions:

eb -S OpenFOAM

In the output you will see the avialable OpenFOAM versions (e.g., OpenFOAM-v2106-cpeGNU-22.08.eb corresponds to OpenFOAM-v2106). Finally, compile OpenFOAM-v2106 version with

eb -r OpenFOAM-v2312-cpeGNU-23.09.eb

We will now see how to load OpenFOAM-v2313.

Note: The following commands can instead be added to the top of your SLURM file. See 3. Example of slurm file.

First, load the required modules:

module load LUMI/23.09 partition/C EasyBuild-user

Finally, source the OpenFOAM installation:

source $EBROOTOPENFOAM/etc/bashrc WM_COMPILER=Cray WM_MPLIB=CRAY-MPICH

Now you should have sourced a fully-working OpenFOAM-v2312 installation. You can test your installation by:

simpleFoam -help

3. Example of slurm file

Below is an example of a slurm file. I recommend placing the slurm file in the OpenFOAM case directory. In the following remember to change:

• <simulation_name>: A user-specified name to easier keep track of your running simulations.
• <project_id>: The ID given to the project (including "project_").
• <email_address>: The e-mail address that will receive updates.

Finally, commit the simulation to the slurm job scheduling system (here slurmFile is the filename of the slurm file):

sbatch slurmFile

You may check the status of your running jobs by:

squeue -u $USER

And cancel running jobs using the JOBID shown by the above command:

scancel JOBID