Installing solids4foam with Docker

What is Docker?

Docker is an open source software platform for creating, deploying and managing virtualized application containers. Using docker we can essentialy create a light-weight virtual machine with solids4foam and its dependencies already installed.

How do I Install Docker?

Docker can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux by following the instructions on the Docker website.

Downloading the solids4foam Docker Image

Once docker is installed, open a terminal on Linux or macOS or PowerShell on Windows; the solids4foam docker image can be downloaded from Docker Hub with one of commands below depending on which version of OpenFOAM or foam you would like

> docker pull solids4foam/solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012
> docker pull solids4foam/solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-9
> docker pull solids4foam/solids4foam-v2.0-foam-extend-4.1

The image is ~6.2 GB.

Creating the solids4foam Docker Container

In macOS and Linux, the solids4foam container can be created with (OpenFOAM-v2012 as an example here)

> docker create --entrypoint /bin/bash -v="${HOME}":/shared \
       --name solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012 \
       -it solids4foam/solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012

where -v="${HOME}":/shared means that your host computer home directory is mounted and shared with the container at /shared. The name of the image and container should be updated to use the version that you downloaded.

In Windows PowerShell, the command becomes:

> docker create --entrypoint /bin/bash -v="${HOME}":/shared \
       \--name solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012 \
       -it solids4foam/solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012

where --name has become \--name.

Starting and Attaching to the solids4foam Docker Container

You can now attach to the created container with

> docker start solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012

and subsequently, connect to it with

> docker attach solids4foam-v2.0-openfoam-v2012

Using solids4foam Within the Container

Once you have logged into the container, you should load OpenFOAM using the appropriate command the version you downloaded:

> source /usr/lib/openfoam/openfoam2012/etc/bashrc             # OpenFOAM-v2012
> source /opt/openfoam9/etc/bashrc                             # OpenFOAM-9
> source /home/dockeruser/OpenFOAM/foam-extend-4.1/etc/bashrc  # foam-extend-4.1

You can then navigate to the solids4foam tutorials directory with

> cd $WM_PROJECT_DIR/../solids4foam/tutorials

Please see the tutorials guide to learn how to run the tutorials.

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Exiting the Docker Container

You can exit a container with

> exit

Note that this will stop the container. You can re-start the container and re-attach to it with the commands given above.