Added ParaView

_data/sidebars/merlin6_sidebar.yml

@@ -85,6 +85,8 @@ entries:
       url: /merlin6/ansys-fluent.html
     - title: ANSYS/MAPDL
       url: /merlin6/ansys-mapdl.html
+    - title: ParaView
+      url: /merlin6/paraview.html
   - title: Announcements
     folderitems:
     - title: Downtimes

pages/merlin6/05 Software Support/paraview.md

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+title: Running Paraview
+#tags:
+last_updated: 03 December 2020
+keywords: software, paraview, mesa, OpenGL
+summary: "This document describes how to run ParaView in the Merlin6 cluster"
+sidebar: merlin6_sidebar
+permalink: /merlin6/paraview.html
+---
+
+## Requirements
+
+**[NoMachine](/merlin6/nomachine.html)** is the official **strongly recommended and supported** tool for running *ParaView*.
+Consider that running over SSH (X11-Forwarding needed) is very slow, but also configuration might not work as it also depends
+on the client configuration (Linux workstation/laptop, Windows with XMing, etc.). Hence, please **avoid running Paraview over SSH**.
+
+## ParaView
+
+### PModules
+
+Is strongly recommended the use of the latest ParaView version available in PModules. In example, for loading **paraview**:
+
+```bash
+module use unstable
+module load paraview/5.8.1
+```
+
+### Running ParaView
+
+For running ParaView, one needs to run it with **Mesa** support. 
+
+The *OpenGL* version runs with just the *paraview* command, however, *Paraview with OpenGL support will not work on the Merlin6 login nodes*.
+This is because Merlin is based on RHEL7 (which is a pretty old Operative System) and integrating OpenGL might require major changes. 
+Hence, for Merlin6 we currently provide **Mesa** support only. We expect that for 2021 it would be also possible to run with OpenGL support.
+
+As said, for running ParaView in Merlin6, on needs to run with Mesa support, and can be done as follows:
+
+```bash
+paraview-mesa paraview
+```
+
+As pointed out in the **Requirements** section, NoMachine is the only supported (and performance) way.
+
+#### Running older versions of ParaView
+
+Older versions of ParaView available in PModules (i.e. *paraview/5.0.1* and *paraview/5.4.1*) might require a different command
+for running paraview with **Mesa** support. The command is the following:
+
+```bash
+# Warning: only for Paraview 5.4.1 and older
+paraview --mesa
+```