VisIt Installation Readme

The installation files for VisIt on the DAAC website are pre-configured with custom profiles that support HPC job launching. Special admin privileges are not required. Mac/Linux and Windows Instructions follow.

Linux/Mac Instructions

VisIt can be installed to any directory on your local workstation. Download the .tgz and run the following command:

% cd /desired/installation/dir
% tar -xvof visit_version_number_OS.tgz

(The text version_number refers to the version of VisIt in the name of the .tgz file. OS can be linux or mac.) For example:

% tar .xvof visit_2.9.0_linux.tgz

The tar extraction will create a directory called "visit". You can maintain multiple versions of VisIt in this same directory. In the visit directory, there is a symbolic link "current" that points to the most recently installed version, and this will be your "default" version.

Environment Variables

You need to configure two environment variables, $PATH and $VISITSSH as follows (depending on your shell):

For C Shell, add the following lines to the .cshrc file:

setenv PATH /path/to/VisIt/extraction/bin:$PATH
setenv VISITSSH /path/to/Kerberos/bin/ssh

For Bash Shell, add the following lines to the .bashrc file :

export PATH="/path/to/VisIt/extraction/bin:$PATH"
export VISITSSH="/path/to/Kerberos/bin/ssh"

(The text path/to/VisIt/extraction above should be replaced with the actual directory path where you extracted VisIt.)

For Mac, the standard HPCMP Kerberos kit is placed in /usr/local/ossh/bin/ssh.

For Linux, the standard HPCMP Kerberos kit is placed in /usr/local/krb5/bin/ssh.

Launching VisIt

The command to launch the default version of VisIt is simply:

% visit

To launch another version (for example, 2.8.1), change the command to:

% visit -v 2.8.2

Windows Instructions

VisIt can be installed to any directory on your local workstation.

To install VisIt on your local Windows workstation, download and extract the .zip file to the desired location.

Environment Variables

To set the environment variables for VisIt, open a command window, and run the following commands:

% setx VISITLOC "c:\path\to\VisIt\extraction\current_version"
% setx VISITSSH "c:\path\to\Kerberos\plink.exe"

(The text path\to\VisIt\extraction\current_version above should be replaced with the actual directory where the VisIt directory is unzipped. The text path\to\Kerberos above should be replaced with the actual directory path to Kerberos.) For example:

% setx VISITLOC "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\LLNL\Visit 2.9.0"
% setx VISITSSH "C:\Program Files (x86)\HPCMP Kerberos\plink.exe"
Launching VisIt

To launch VisIt, browse to the directory where you extracted the .zip file and perform the following:

  1. Open the "LLNL" directory.
  2. Find "visit.exe"

You can launch the program from here. However, you may want to add a shortcut to your Desktop.

Additional information on HPC job launching using VisIt can be found at: https://daac.hpc.mil/software/VisIt/VisIt_HPC_Job_Launching.html.

Release Notes

The release notes for version 2.9.0 can be found here: https://wci.llnl.gov/simulation/computer-codes/visit/releases/release-notes-2.9.0

The release notes for version 2.8.2 can be found here: https://wci.llnl.gov/simulation/computer-codes/visit/releases/release-notes-2.8.2

All packages (Mac, Linux, and Windows) have parallel profiles included that launch client-server jobs on high memory nodes. Most jobs will notice a significant performance increase.