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Install FEniCS without root privileges

+2 votes

I'm planning to install FEniCS in a cluster environment, where I have access only to my $HOME, etc. How to modify the existing bash script to use different path to install?

asked Nov 24, 2015 by bp FEniCS Novice (520 points)

3 Answers

+1 vote
 
Best answer

Maybe as a reference for whoever needs to install without root access on an old CentOS machine. The following worked for me:

  1. Download the latest Anaconda installer and run bash Anaconda2<version-os>.sh During the installation, you will have an option to choose your install directory

  2. Make sure you run in bash (eg. by typing bash) and then run the following

    conda install dolfin=1.4.0 boost=1.55 eigen3 ffc petsc petsc4py instant ufl fiat vtk=5.10 fenics=1.4.0 mkl swig=3.0.2 scientificpython --channel https://conda.binstar.org/juanlu001/channel/fenics:1.4.0:centos

As you can see, some versions need to be specified manually for the moment. Hope it works.

answered Nov 27, 2015 by maartent FEniCS User (3,910 points)
selected Dec 2, 2015 by bp

Works perfectly.

commented Dec 2, 2015 by bp FEniCS Novice (520 points)
+1 vote

I would recommend installing directly. For the python packages (FIAT, instant, ffc, ufl, uflacs) you can just use:

python setup.py install --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR

and for DOLFIN you can do

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL_DIR ..

You may need to set more options for cmake. You will probably want to make sure you have a good installation of PETSc before anything else. You can also ask PETSc to download third party libraries, such as SCOTCH and ParMETIS etc.

answered Nov 25, 2015 by chris_richardson FEniCS Expert (31,740 points)
0 votes

Alternatively, you can use conda installation or installation from source, running the command
curl -s http://fenicsproject.org/fenics-install.sh | bash

Take a look at http://fenicsproject.org/download/

It is easy to test them.

answered Nov 25, 2015 by ggrekas FEniCS Novice (220 points)
edited Nov 25, 2015 by ggrekas

I've tried on a few local pcs.
With conda there's a known issue in CentOS 6 (libgc.so is too old).

commented Nov 25, 2015 by bp FEniCS Novice (520 points)

You can run version 1.4.0 on CentOS 6, there are binaries available especially for this.

commented Nov 27, 2015 by maartent FEniCS User (3,910 points)
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