ODU Research Computing Forum

Starting COMSOL on RDC and OnDemand

Engineering
#1

How could I use RDC and OnDemand to start COMSOL? Is there an example set of code to get started?

(Edit: RDC = remote desktop connection, which is also known as RDP = remote desktop protocol)

#2

COMSOL is a GUI application that needs to be run with RDP interface (see our wiki linked below).
Once in the desktop environment, open up a terminal (from the menu, choose System Tools -> MATE Terminal. Then type comsol-51 and press Enter.

You can alternatively launch COMSOL from the Virtual Desktop interface of the Open OnDemand. The same time limit and policy applies. In addition, the virtual desktop session is limited to 24 hours max, therefore if your calculation is going to be longer than 24 hour, it is advised that you use the RDP connection.

NOTES:

  • The comsol-51 is a SLURM launch script, which means that you do not need to allocate computing resources using salloc before running COMSOL.

  • By default the COMSOL jobs are Wahab is limited to 2 days. It allocates four CPU cores, which should be sufficient in many cases. If your calculation needs can use more cores to shorten the running time and you are comfortable with UNIX shell scripting, you are welcome to copy /usr/local/bin/comsol-51 to your own directory and modify it to suit your own need.

  • Always be conscious to terminate COMSOL application by closing all the COMSOL windows at the end of your simulation, because we have very limited number of COMSOL licenses. It is often in high demand. We request that users use no more than 3 licenses at a given time. Do not leave your idle COMSOL window overnight.

References: