HPC/Applications/comsol

Introduction

The COMSOL Multiphysics product is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can run either the native version on your desktop or use the Linux version from Carbon, displaying on your desktop via X11. Contact me (stern) for a DVD with the software.

Running comsol requires a license. Of the available features we have licensed a subset, shown at right.

Basic usage with X11

For casual use, and with X11 tunneling to Carbon already set up, simply add to your ~/.bashrc file on Carbon:

module load comsol

Then start the GUI on a clogin node:

comsol &

This will use one CPU core. To run calculations off the GUI multithreaded (using several cores on one node), use instead:

OMP_NUM_THREADS=4 comsol &

Only one user can use Comsol at a time. Quit the application as soon as you are done.

License forwarding for native desktop use

You can use a native Comsol version on your desktop but need a connection to the Comsol license server running on Carbon. Use these steps to set up the connection.

• On your desktop machine, add to your SSH tunnel config file ~/.ssh/config in the Host clogin section:

Host clogin
       …
       # Comsol FlexLM
       LocalForward  1719 mgmt03:1719
       LocalForward 33317 mgmt03:1718
       LocalForward 33318 mgmt04:1718
       LocalForward 33319 sched1:1718

Adapt these settings for SSH applications other than OpenSSH.

• Log in to clogin.
• Start the Comsol installer on your machine. Use the following settings when asked for licensing:
  • License type: networked server
  • License hosts:

localhost, port 33317
localhost, port 33318
localhost, port 33319

• Complete the installer.
• Locate and start the COMSOL Multiphysics application.