# Running BOUT++¶

## Quick start¶

The examples/ directory contains some example physics models for a variety of fluid models. There are also some under tests/integrated/, which often just run a part of the code rather than a complete simulation. The simplest example to start with is examples/conduction/. This solves a single equation for a 3D scalar field $$T$$:

$\frac{\partial T}{\partial t} = \nabla_{||}(\chi\partial_{||} T)$

There are several files involved:

• conduction.cxx contains the source code which specifies the equation to solve. See Heat conduction for a line-by-line walkthrough of this file

• conduct_grid.nc is the grid file, which in this case just specifies the number of grid points in $$X$$ and $$Y$$ (nx & ny) with everything else being left as the default (e.g. grid spacings dx and dy are $$1$$, the metric tensor is the identity matrix). For details of the grid file format, see Generating input grids.

• generate.py is a Python script to create the grid file. In this case it just writes nx and ny

• data/BOUT.inp is the settings file, specifying how many output timesteps to take, differencing schemes to use, and many other things. In this case it’s mostly empty so the defaults are used.

First you need to compile the example:

$gmake  which should print out something along the lines of: Compiling conduction.cxx Linking conduction  If you get an error, most likely during the linking stage, you may need to go back and make sure the libraries are all set up correctly. A common problem is mixing MPI implementations, for example compiling NetCDF using Open MPI and then BOUT++ with MPICH2. Unfortunately the solution is to recompile everything with the same compiler. Then try running the example. If you’re running on a standalone server, desktop or laptop then try: $ mpirun -np 2 ./conduction


If you’re running on a cluster or supercomputer, you should find out how to submit jobs. This varies, but usually on these bigger machines there will be a queueing system and you’ll need to use qsub, msub, llsubmit or similar to submit jobs.

When the example runs, it should print a lot of output. This is recording all the settings being used by the code, and is also written to log files for future reference. The test should take a few seconds to run, and produce a bunch of files in the data/ subdirectory.

• BOUT.log.* contains a log from each process, so because we ran with “-np 2” there should be 2 logs. The one from processor $$0$$ will be the same as what was printed to the screen. This is mainly useful because if one process crashes it may only put an error message into its own log.

• BOUT.settings contains all the options used in the code, including options which were not set and used the default values. It’s in the same format as BOUT.inp, so can be renamed and used to re-run simulations if needed. In some cases the options used have documentation, with a brief explanation of how they are used. In most cases the type the option is used as (e.g. int, BoutReal or bool) is given.

• BOUT.restart.*.nc are the restart files for the last time point. Currently each processor saves its own state in a separate file, but there is experimental support for parallel I/O. For the settings, see Input and Output.

• BOUT.dmp.*.nc contain the output data, including time history. As with the restart files, each processor currently outputs a separate file.

Restart files allow the run to be restarted from where they left off:

$mpirun -np 2 ./conduction restart  This will delete the output data BOUT.dmp.*.nc files, and start again. If you want to keep the output from the first run, add “append”: $ mpirun -np 2 ./conduction restart append


which will then append any new outputs to the end of the old data files. For more information on restarting, see Restarting runs.

To see some of the other command-line options try “-h”:

./conduction -h  and see the section on options (BOUT++ options). There is also a python tool called bout_runners which can be used for executing BOUT++ runs. In addition, this tool can be used to • programmatically change parameters of a project in python • keep track of all the metadata of the runs of the project • automate the orchestration (including pre- and post-processing routines) of chains of runs locally or on a cluster To analyse the output of the simulation, cd into the data subdirectory and start Python. ## Analysing the output using Python¶ The recommended tool for analysing BOUT++ output is xBOUT, a Python library that provides analysis, plotting and animation with human-readable syntax (no magic numbers!) using xarray. See the xBOUT documentation xbout.readthedocs.io. There is also an older set of NumPy-based Python tools, described below. In order to analyse the output of the simulation using Python, you will first need to have set up python to use the BOUT++ libraries boutdata and boututils; see section Python configuration for how to do this. The analysis routines have some requirements such as SciPy; see section Requirements for details. To print a list of variables in the output files, one way is to use the DataFile class. This is a wrapper around the various NetCDF libraries for python: >>> from boututils.datafile import DataFile >>> DataFile("BOUT.dmp.0.nc").list()  To collect a variable, reading in the data as a NumPy-like BoutArray array: >>> from boutdata.collect import collect >>> T = collect("T") >>> T.shape  Note that the order of the indices is different in Python and IDL: In Python, 4D variables are arranged as [t, x, y, z]. BoutArray as a thin wrapper for numpy.ndarray which adds BOUT++ attributes. To show an animation >>> from boututils.showdata import showdata >>> showdata(T[:,0,:,0])  The first index of the array passed to showdata is assumed to be time, amd the remaining indices are plotted. In this example we pass a 2D array [t,y], so showdata will animate a line plot. ## Natural language support¶ If you have locales installed, and configured the locale path correctly (see Natural Language Support), then the LANG environment variable selects the language to use. Currently BOUT++ only has support for fr, de, es, zh_TW and zh_CN locales e.g. LANG=zh_TW.utf8 ./conduction  which should produce an output like: BOUT++ 版 4.3.0 版: 667c19c136fc3e72fcd7c7b2109d44886fdf818d MD5 checksum: 2263dc17fa414179c7ad87c3972f624b 代碼於 Nov 21 2019 17:26:55 编译 ...  or LANG=es_ES.utf8 ./conduction  which should produce: Versión de BOUT++ 4.3.0 Revisión: 667c19c136fc3e72fcd7c7b2109d44886fdf818d MD5 checksum: 2263dc17fa414179c7ad87c3972f624b Código compilado en Nov 21 2019 en 17:26:55 ...  The name of the locale (zh_TW.utf8 or es_ES.utf8 above) can be different on different machines. To see a list of available locales on your system try running: locale -a  If you are missing a locale you need, see your distribution’s help, or try this Arch wiki page on locale. ## When things go wrong¶ BOUT++ is still under development, and so occasionally you may be lucky enough to discover a new bug. This is particularly likely if you’re modifying the physics module source code (see BOUT++ physics models) when you need a way to debug your code too. • Check the end of each processor’s log file (tail data/BOUT.log.*). When BOUT++ exits before it should, what is printed to screen is just the output from processor 0. If an error occurred on another processor then the error message will be written to it’s log file instead. • By default when an error occurs a kind of stack trace is printed which shows which functions were being run (most recent first). This should give a good indication of where an error occurred. If this stack isn’t printed, make sure checking is set to level 2 or higher (./configure –-enable-checks=2). • If the error is due to non-finite numbers, increase the checking level (./configure –-enable-checks=3) to perform more checking of values and (hopefully) find an error as soon as possible after it occurs. • If the error is a segmentation fault, you can try a debugger such as gdb or totalview. You will likely need to compile with some debugging flags (./configure --enable-debug). • You can also enable exceptions on floating point errors (./configure --enable-sigfpe), though the majority of these types of errors should be caught with checking level set to 3. • Expert users can try AddressSanitizer, which is a tool that comes with recent versions of GCC and Clang. To enable AddressSanitizer, include -fsanitize=leak -fsanitize=address -fsanitize=undefined in CXXFLAGS when configuring BOUT++, or add them to BOUT_FLAGS. ## Startup output¶ When BOUT++ is run, it produces a lot of output initially, mainly listing the options which have been used so you can check that it’s doing what you think it should be. It’s generally a good idea to scan over this see if there are any important warnings or errors. Each processor outputs its own log file BOUT.log.# and the log from processor 0 is also sent to the screen. This output may look a little different if it’s out of date, but the general layout will probably be the same. The exact order that options are printed in may also vary between versions and models. First comes the introductory blurb: BOUT++ version 4.4.0 Revision: 7cfbc6890a82cb6b3b6c81870d8a8fca723de542 Code compiled on Dec 7 2021 at 15:14:05 B.Dudson (University of York), M.Umansky (LLNL) 2007 Based on BOUT by Xueqiao Xu, 1999  The version number (4.4.0 here) gets increased occasionally after some major feature has been added. To help match simulations to code versions, the Git revision of the core BOUT++ code and the date and time it was compiled is recorded. This information makes it possible to verify precisely which version of the code was used for any given run. The processor number comes next: Processor number: 0 of 1  This will always be processor number ’0’ on screen as only the output from processor ’0’ is sent to the terminal. The process ID (pid) is also printed: pid: 17835  which is useful for distinguishing multiple simulations running at the same time and, for example, to stop one run if it starts misbehaving. Next comes the compile-time options, which depend on how BOUT++ was configured (see Compiling BOUT++): Compile-time options: Checking enabled, level 2 Signal handling enabled netCDF support enabled Parallel NetCDF support disabled OpenMP parallelisation disabled Compiled with flags : "-Wall -Wextra ..."  This says that some run-time checking of values is enabled, that the code will try to catch segmentation faults to print a useful error, that NetCDF files are supported, but that the parallel flavour isn’t. The compilation flags are printed, which can be useful for checking if a run was built with optimisation or debugging enabled. These flags can be quite long, so we’ve truncated them in the snippet above. The complete command line is printed (excluding any MPI options): Command line options for this run : ./conduction nout=1  After this the core BOUT++ code reads some options: Reading options file data/BOUT.inp Option nout = 100 (data/BOUT.inp) overwritten with: nout = 1 (Command line) Writing options to file data/BOUT.settings Getting grid data from options Option mesh:type = bout (default) Option mesh:StaggerGrids = 0 (default) Option mesh:maxregionblocksize = 64 (default) Option mesh:calcParallelSlices_on_communicate = 1 (default) Option mesh:ddz:fft_filter = 0 (default) Option mesh:symmetricGlobalX = 1 (default) Option mesh:symmetricglobaly = true (data/BOUT.inp)  This lists each option and the value it has been assigned. For every option the source of the value being used is also given. If a value had been given on the command line then (command line) would appear after the option.: Option mesh:ddx:first = c2 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddx:second = c2 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddx:upwind = w3 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddy:first = c2 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddy:second = c2 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddy:upwind = w3 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddz:first = fft (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddz:second = fft (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ddz:upwind = w3 (data/BOUT.inp)  This is a list of the differential methods for each direction. These are set in the BOUT.inp file ([mesh:ddx], [mesh:ddy] and [mesh:ddz] sections), but can be overridden for individual operators. For each direction, numerical methods can be specified for first and second central difference terms, upwinding terms of the form $${{\frac{\partial f}{\partial t}}} = {{\boldsymbol{v}}}\cdot\nabla f$$, and flux terms of the form $${{\frac{\partial f}{\partial t}}} = \nabla\cdot({{\boldsymbol{v}}}f)$$. By default the flux terms are just split into a central and an upwinding term. A list of available methods is given in Differencing methods.: Loading mesh Option input:transform_from_field_aligned = 1 (default) Option mesh:nx = 1 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ny = 100 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:nz = 1 (data/BOUT.inp) Read nz from input grid file Grid size: 1 x 100 x 1 Variable 'MXG' not in mesh options. Setting to 0 Option mxg = 0 (data/BOUT.inp) Variable 'MYG' not in mesh options. Setting to 0 Option MYG = 2 (default) Guard cells (x,y,z): 0, 2, 0 Option mesh:ixseps1 = -1 (data/BOUT.inp) Option mesh:ixseps2 = -1 (data/BOUT.inp)  Optional quantities (such as MXG/MYG in this case) which are not specified are given a default (best-guess) value, and a warning is printed.: EQUILIBRIUM IS SINGLE NULL (SND) MYPE_IN_CORE = 0 DXS = 0, DIN = -1. DOUT = -1 UXS = 0, UIN = -1. UOUT = -1 XIN = -1, XOUT = -1 Twist-shift:  At this point, BOUT++ reads the grid file, and works out the topology of the grid, and connections between processors. BOUT++ then tries to read the metric coefficients from the grid file: Variable 'g11' not in mesh options. Setting to 1.000000e+00 Variable 'g22' not in mesh options. Setting to 1.000000e+00 Variable 'g33' not in mesh options. Setting to 1.000000e+00 Variable 'g12' not in mesh options. Setting to 0.000000e+00 Variable 'g13' not in mesh options. Setting to 0.000000e+00 Variable 'g23' not in mesh options. Setting to 0.000000e+00  These warnings are printed because the coefficients have not been specified in the grid file, and so the metric tensor is set to the default identity matrix. For this particular example we don’t need to do anything special in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, so we set the parallel transform to be the identity (see Parallel Transforms): Option mesh:paralleltransform = identity (default)  If only the contravariant components (g11 etc.) of the metric tensor are specified, the covariant components (g_11 etc.) are calculated by inverting the metric tensor matrix. Error estimates are then calculated by calculating $$g_{ij}g^{jk}$$ as a check. Since no metrics were specified in the input, the metric tensor was set to the identity matrix, making inversion easy and the error tiny.: Variable 'J' not in mesh options. Setting to 0.000000e+00 WARNING: Jacobian 'J' not found. Calculating from metric tensor Variable 'Bxy' not in mesh options. Setting to 0.000000e+00 WARNING: Magnitude of B field 'Bxy' not found. Calculating from metric tensor Calculating differential geometry terms Communicating connection terms Boundary regions in this processor: upper_target, lower_target, Constructing default regions  The Laplacian inversion (see Laplacian inversion) code is initialised, and prints out the options used.: Initialising Laplacian inversion routines Option phiboussinesq:async = 1 (default) Option phiboussinesq:filter = 0 (default) Option phiboussinesq:maxmode = 128 (default) Option phiboussinesq:low_mem = 0 (default) Option phiboussinesq:nonuniform = 1 (default) Option phiboussinesq:all_terms = 1 (default) Option phiboussinesq:flags = 0 (delta_1/BOUT.inp)  After this comes the physics module-specific output: Initialising physics module Option solver:type = cvode (default)  This typically lists the options used, useful/important normalisation factors, and so on. Finally, once the physics module has been initialised, and the current values loaded, the solver can be started: Initialising solver Option datadir = delta_1 () Option dump_format = nc (default) Option restart_format = nc (default) Using NetCDF4 format for file 'delta_1/BOUT.restart.nc' Constructing default regions Boundary region inner X Boundary region outer X 3d fields = 2, 2d fields = 0 neq=100, local_N=100  This last line gives the number of equations being evolved (in this case 100), and the number of these on this processor (here 100).: The absolute and relative tolerances come next: Option solver:atol = 1e-12 (default) Option solver:rtol = 1e-05 (default)  This next option specifies the maximum number of internal timesteps that CVODE will take between outputs.: Option solver:mxstep = 500 (default)  After (almost!) all of the options are read in, the simulation proper starts: Running simulation Run ID: 332467c7-1210-401a-b44c-f8a3a3415827 Run started at : Tue 07 Dec 2021 17:50:39 GMT  The Run ID here is a universally unique identifier (UUID) which is a random 128-bit label unique to this current simulation. This makes it easier to identify all of the associated outputs of a simulation, and record the data for future reference. A few more options may appear between these last progress messages and the per-timestep output discussed in the next section. ## Per-timestep output¶ At the beginning of a run, just after the last line in the previous section, a header is printed out as a guide: Sim Time | RHS evals | Wall Time | Calc Inv Comm I/O SOLVER  Each timestep (the one specified in BOUT.inp, not the internal timestep), BOUT++ prints out something like: 1.001e+02 76 2.27e+02 87.1 5.3 1.0 0.0 6.6  This gives the simulation time; the number of times the time-derivatives (RHS) were evaluated; the wall-time this took to run, and percentages for the time spent in different parts of the code. • Calc is the time spent doing calculations such as multiplications, derivatives etc • Inv is the time spent in inversion code (i.e. inverting Laplacians), including any communication which may be needed to do the inversion. • Comm is the time spent communicating variables (outside the inversion routine) • I/O is the time spent writing dump and restart files to disk. Most of the time this should not be an issue • SOLVER is the time spent in the implicit solver code. The output sent to the terminal (not the log files) also includes a run time, and estimated remaining time. ## Restarting runs¶ Every output timestep, BOUT++ writes a set of files named “BOUT.restart.#.nc” where ’#’ is the processor number (for parallel output, a single file “BOUT.restart.nc” is used). To restart from where the previous run finished, just add the keyword restart to the end of the command, for example:  mpirun -np 2 ./conduction restart


Equivalently, put “restart=true” near the top of the BOUT.inp input file. Note that this will overwrite the existing data in the BOUT.dmp.\*.nc files. If you want to append to them instead then add the keyword append to the command, for example:

$mpirun -np 2 ./conduction restart append  or also put append=true near the top of the BOUT.inp input file. When restarting simulations BOUT++ will by default output the initial state, unless appending to existing data files when it will not output until the first timestep is completed. To override this behaviour, you can specify the option dump_on_restart manually. If dump_on_restart is true then the initial state will always be written out, if false then it never will be (regardless of the values of restart and append). If you need to restart from a different point in your simulation, or the BOUT.restart files become corrupted, you can use xBOUT to create new restart files from any time-point in your output files. Use the .to_restart() method: >>> import xbout >>> df = xbout.open_boutdataset("data/BOUT.dmp.*.nc") >>> df.bout.to_restart(tind=10)  The above will take time point 10 from the BOUT.dmp.*.nc files in the data directory. For each one, it will output a BOUT.restart.*.nc file in the output directory .. ## Stopping simulations¶ If you need to stop a simulation early this can be done by Ctrl-C in a terminal, but this will stop the simulation immediately without shutting down cleanly. Most of the time this will be fine, but interrupting a simulation while it is writing data to file could result in inconsistent or corrupted data. ### Stop file¶ Note This method needs to be enabled before the simulation starts by setting stopCheck=true on the command line or input options: $ mpirun -np 4 ./conduction stopCheck=true


or in the top section of BOUT.inp set stopCheck=true.

At every output time, the monitor checks for the existence of a file, by default called BOUT.stop, in the same directory as the output data. If the file exists then the monitor signals the time integration solver to quit. This should result in a clean shutdown.

To stop a simulation using this method, just create an empty file in the output directory:

$mpirun -np 4 ./conduction stopCheck=true ...$ touch data/BOUT.stop


just remember to delete the file afterwards.

### Send signal USR1¶

Another option is to send signal user defined signal 1:

$mpirun -np 4 ./conduction & ...$ killall -s USR1 conduction


Note that this will stop all conduction simulation on this node. Many HPC systems provide tools to send signals to the simulation nodes, such as qsig on archer.

To just stop one simulation, the bout-stop-script can send a signal based on the path of the simulation data dir:

$mpirun -np 4 ./conduction & ...$ bout-stop-script data


This will stop the simulation cleanly, and:

$mpirun -np 4 ./conduction & ...$ bout-stop-script data -force


will kill the simulation immediately.

## Manipulating restart files¶

It is sometimes useful to change the number of processors used in a simulation, or to modify restart files in various ways. For example, a 3D turbulence simulation might start with a quick 2D simulation with diffusive transport to reach a steady-state. The restart files can then be extended into 3D, noise added to seed instabilities, and the files split over a more processors.

Routines to modify restart files are in tools/pylib/boutdata/restart.py:

>>> from boutdata import restart
>>> help(restart)


### Changing number of processors¶

To change the number of processors use the redistribute function:

>>> from boutdata import restart
>>> restart.redistribute(32, path="../oldrun", output=".")


where in this example 32 is the number of processors desired; path sets the path to the existing restart files, and output is the path where the new restart files should go. Note Make sure that path and output are different.

If your simulation is divided in X and Y directions then you should also specify the number of processors in the X direction, NXPE:

>>> restart.redistribute(32, path="../oldrun", output=".", nxpe=8)


Note Currently this routine doesn’t check that this split is consistent with branch cuts, e.g. for X-point tokamak simulations. If an inconsistent choice is made then the BOUT++ restart will fail.

Note It is a good idea to set nxpe in the BOUT.inp file to be consistent with what you set here. If it is inconsistent then the restart will fail, but the error message may not be particularly enlightening.