Getting started

The full documentation is online at https://mabarnes.github.io/moment_kinetics.

Setup

First clone this git repository, e.g. (to clone it into a directory with the default name moment_kinetics)

$ git clone git@github.com:mabarnes/moment_kinetics

The command above assumes that you have an account on Github.com, and that account has ssh keys set up. If that is not the case you can clone using https instead

$ git clone https://github.com/mabarnes/moment_kinetics

When using https some things (e.g. pushing to the remote repository) may require you to use 2-factor authentication, see https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/getting-started-with-git/about-remote-repositories#cloning-with-https-urls.

!!! warning Do not download the zip-file from the Github.com page. This gives you the source code files but does not create a git repository. We get some version information from git when running the code, so without the git repository you will not be able to run a simulation.

1. If you have already installed Julia, ensure that the Julia version is >= 1.9.0 by doing

   $ julia --version
   

   at command line. The setup script in step 2 can also download a Julia binary if you have not already installed Julia.

2. If you are running on a desktop/laptop (rather than an HPC cluster) ensure that you have an MPI implementation installed (using whatever the usual way of installing software is on your system). It should not matter which MPI implementation - openmpi is often a good choice if you have no reason to prefer a particular one. Check that the MPI compiler wrapper mpicc is available, e.g.

   $ mpicc --version
   

   should run without an error.

3. Run the setup script

   $ machines/machine_setup.sh
   

   This script will prompt you for various options. The default choices should be sensible in most cases. On a laptop/desktop the 'name of machine to set up' will be 'generic-pc' and will set up for interactive use. On supported clusters, 'name of machine' will be the name of the cluster. On other clusters 'generic-batch' can be used, but requires some manual setup (see machines/generic-batch-template/README.md).

   For more information, see machine_setup notes.

   If you want or need to set up 'by hand' without using machines/machine_setup.sh, see Manual setup.

Some other notes that might sometimes be useful:

• To speed up running scripts or the first call of run_moment_kinetics in a REPL session, it is possible to compile a 'system image' (moment_kinetics.so). By running

  $ julia --project -O3 precompile.jl
  

  and then start Julia by running for example

  $ julia --project -O3 -Jmoment_kinetics.so 
  

  this significantly decreases the load time but prevents code changes from taking effect when moment_kinetics.so is used until you repeat the compilation of the system image. Note that this also prevents the Revise package from updating moment_kinetics when you edit the code during and interactive session.

  System images are created by default on HPC clusters, and are required to use the provided jobscript-*.template submission scripts (used by submit-run.sh and submit-restart.sh). This is to try and minimise the compilation that has to be replicated on all the (possibly thousands of) processes in a parallel run. After changing source code, you should run

  $ precompile-submit.sh
  

  (to re-compile the moment_kinetics.so system image).

• In the course of development, it is sometimes helpful to upgrade the Julia version. Upgrading the version of Julia or upgrading packages may require a fresh installation of moment_kinetics. To make a fresh install with the latest package versions you should be able to just run

  pkg> update

  (to enter 'Package mode' enter ']' at the julia> prompt). It might sometimes necessary or helpful to instead remove (or rename) the Manifest.jl file in the main directory, and re-run the setup from step 2) above. It can sometimes be necessary to remove or rename the .julia/ directory (located by default in your home directory) to force all the dependencies to be rebuilt.

• When using the Plots-based post-processing library, one may have to set an environment variable to avoid error messages from the Qt library. If you execute the command

  $ julia --project run_post_processing.jl runs/your_run_dir/
  

  and see the error message

  qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display
  qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
  This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
  

  this can be suppressed by setting

  export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen
  

  in your .bashrc or .bash_profile files.

Run a simulation

To run julia with optimization, type

$ julia -O3 --project run_moment_kinetics.jl input.toml

Note that the middle character in -O3 is a capital letter 'O', not a zero. (On HPC clusters, or if you selected the "set up separate packages for post processing" option from machines/machine_setup.sh, you should use -O3 --check-bounds=no instead of just -O3, and the same in the Restarting section.)

Options are specified in a TOML file, e.g. input.toml here. The defaults are specified in moment_kinetics_input.jl.

• To run in parallel, just put mpirun -np <n> in front of the call you would normally use, with <n> the number of processes to use.
• It may be more convenient when running moment_kinetics more than once to work from the Julia REPL, e.g.

  $ julia -O3 --project
  julia> using moment_kinetics
  julia> run_moment_kinetics("input.toml")
  

  where input is the name of a TOML file containing the desired options. It is also possible to pass a Dict() containing any non-default options desired, which might sometimes be useful in tests or scripts

  julia> run_moment_kinetics(input)
  

  Especially when developing the code, a lot of compilation time can be saved by using Revise.jl, and re-running a test case in the REPL (without restarting julia) - this is enabled by default when setting up using machines/machine_setup.sh for 'generic-pc'.

On an HPC cluster, you can submit a simulation (using the input file input.toml) to the batch queue using the convenience script

$ ./submit-run.sh input.toml

See the help text

$ ./submit-run.sh -h

for various command line options to change parameters (e.g. number of nodes, etc.).

If you need to rebuild the system images moment_kinetics.so and makie_postproc.so or plots_postproc.so because you have updated the code since they were built, it may be convenient to use

$ ./submit-precompile-and-run.sh input.toml

which will submit jobs for compilation, to run the simulation, and to do post processing. The simulation job will wait for the compilation job creating moment_kinetics.so to finish before starting. The post processing job will wait for the compilation job creating makie_postproc.so or plots_postproc.so to finish before starting.

Stopping a run

When running in the REPL (especially with MPI) interrupting a run using Ctrl-C can mess things up, and require you to restart Julia. There is also a chance that you might interrupt while writing the output files and corrupt them. To avoid these problems, you can stop the run cleanly (including writing the distribution functions at the last time point, so that it is possible to restart the run from where you stopped it), by creating an empty file called stop in the run directory. For example, if the name of your run is 'my_example'

$ touch runs/my_example/stop

moment_kinetics checks for this file when it is going to write output, and if it is present writes all output and then returns cleanly. The 'stop file' is deleted when a run is (re-)started, if present, so you do not have to manually delete it before (re-)starting the run again.

Restarting

To restart a simulation using input.toml from the last time point in the existing run directory,

$ julia -O3 --project run_moment_kinetics --restart input.toml

or to restart from a specific output file - either from the same run or (if the settings are compatible, see below) a different one - here runs/example/example.dfns.h5

$ julia -O3 --project run_moment_kinetics input.toml runs/example/example.dfns.h5

The output file must include distribution functions. When not using parallel I/O there will be multiple output files from different MPI ranks - any one of these can be passed.

To do the same from the Julia REPL

$ julia -O3 --project
julia> run_moment_kinetics("input.toml", restart=true)

or

julia> run_moment_kinetics("input.toml", restart="runs/example/example.dfns.h5")

When calling the run_moment_kinetics() function you can also choose a particular time index to restart from, e.g.

julia> run_moment_kinetics("input.toml", restart="runs/example/example.dfns.h5", restart_time_index=42)

On an HPC cluster, you can submit a restart (using the input file input.toml) to the batch queue using the convenience script

$ ./submit-restart.sh input.toml

or to restart from a particular output file

$ ./submit-restart.sh -r runs/example/example.dfns.h5 input.toml

See the help text

$ ./submit-restart.sh -h

for various other command line options to change parameters (e.g. number of nodes, etc.).

If you need to rebuild the system images moment_kinetics.so and makie_postproc.so or plots_postproc.so because you have updated the code since they were built, it may be convenient to use

$ ./submit-precompile-and-restart.sh [-r runs/example/example.dfns.h5] input.toml

which will submit jobs for compilation, to restart the simulation, and to do post processing. The simulation job will wait for the compilation job creating moment_kinetics.so to finish before starting. The post processing job will wait for the compilation job creating makie_postproc.so or plots_postproc.so to finish before starting.

It is possible to restart a run from another output file with different resolution settings or different moment-kinetic options. This is done by interpolating variables from the old run onto the new grid.

• When interpolating in spatial dimensions it is not recommended to change the length of the domain.
• For velocity space dimensions, changing the size of the domain should be OK. Points outside the original domain will be filled with $\propto \exp(-v^2)$ decreasing values.
• When changing from 1D (no $r$-dimension) to 2D (with $r$-dimension), the interpolated values will be constant in $r$.
• When changing from 1V to 2V or 3V, the interpolated values will be proportional to $\exp(-v_j^2)$ in the new dimension(s).

When running in parallel, both the old and the new grids must be compatible with the distributed-MPI parallelisation. When not using Parallel I/O, the distributed-MPI domain decomposition must be identical in the old and new runs (as each block only reads from a single file).

Post-processing with makie_post_processing

The default post-processing module, written to be a bit more generic and flexible than the original Plots-based one, and able to be used interactively, is provided in makie_post_processing, see Post processing.

On an HPC cluster, when you call ./submit-run.sh or ./submit-restart.sh, a job will (by default) be submitted to run makie_post_processing.makie_post_process or plots_post_processing.analyze_and_plot_data (depending on which you have set up, or on whether you pass the -o argument when both are set up) on the output after the run is finished. You can skip this by passing the -a argument to ./submit-run.sh or ./submit-restart.sh.

Original, Plots-based post processing quickstart

This post-processing functionality is now disabled by default, but you can enable it by entering y at the "Would you like to set up plots_post_processing?" prompt in machines/machine_setup.sh.

To make plots and calculate frequencies/growth rates, run

$ julia --project -O3 run_post_processing.jl runs/<directory to process>

passing the directory to process as a command line argument. Input options for post-processing can be specified in post_processing_input.jl. Note that even when running interactively, it is necessary to restart Julia after modifying post_processing_input.jl.

Post processing can be done for several directories at once using

$ julia --project -O3 post_processing_driver.jl runs/<directory1> runs/<directory2> ...

passing the directories to process as command line arguments. Optionally pass a number as the first argument to parallelise post processing of different directories.

Parallel I/O

To enable parallel I/O, HDF5.jl needs to be configured to use an HDF5 library which has MPI enabled and is compiled using the same MPI as you run Julia with. To ensure this happens, machines/machine_setup.sh will download the HDF5 source code and compile a local copy of the library under machines/artifacts, unless you enter n at the "Do you want to download, and compile a local version of HDF5" prompt (except on known HPC clusters where an MPI-enabled HDF5 is provided by a module - this is currently true on ARCHER2 - where the module-provided HDF5 is used).

Running parameter scans

Parameter scans (see Parameter scans) can be performed by running

$ julia -O3 --project run_parameter_scan.jl path/to/scan/input.toml

If running a scan, it can be parallelised by passing the -p argument to julia, e.g. to run on 8 processes

$ julia -p 8 -O3 --project run_parameter_scan.jl path/to/scan/input.toml

Tests

There is a test suite in the test/ subdirectory. It can be run in a few ways:

• Execute some or all of the tests as a script. For example in the terminal run

  $ julia -O3 --project moment_kinetics/test/runtests.jl
  

  or in the REPL run

  julia> include("moment_kinetics/test/runtests.jl")
  

  Individual test files can also be used instead of runtests.jl, which runs all the tests.
• You can also run the tests using Pkg. Either using pkg> mode

  $ julia -O3 --project
  julia> <press ']' to enter pkg mode>
  (moment_kinetics) pkg> test moment_kinetics
  

  using Pkg in the REPL

  $ julia -O3 --project
  julia> import Pkg
  julia> Pkg.test("moment_kinetics")
  

  or run on the command line

  julia -O3 --project -e "import Pkg; Pkg.test("moment_kinetics")`
  

  The downside of this method is that it will cause NCDatasets to be installed if you did not install it already, which might sometimes cause linking errors (related to the HDF5 library, see Optional dependencies).

By default the test suite should run fairly quickly (in a few minutes). To do so, it skips many cases. To run more comprehensive tests, you can activate the --long option:

• In the REPL, run

  julia> push!(ARGS, "--long")
  

  before running the tests.
• Running from the terminal, pass as a command line argument, e.g.

  $ julia -O3 --project --long moment_kinetics/test/runtests.jl
  

• Using test_args argument

  julia> Pkg.test("moment_kinetics"; test_args=["--long"])
  

  Note the semicolon is necessary.

To get more output on what tests were successful, an option --verbose (or -v) can be passed in a similar way to --long (if any tests fail, the output is printed by default).