PALM Quickstart Guide

Ideally, you have successfully installed PALM using the automatic installer. If so, the installer has

• downloaded PALM from the subversion control (svn) repository into a predefined directory structure on your local computer (see Fig. 1),
  
  
• created the required palmrun configuration file, e.g. .palm.config.default (hidden file),
  
  
• written some environment variables to Bash configuration file $HOME/.bashrc

    export PATH=$HOME/palm/current_version/trunk/SCRIPTS:$PATH
    export PALM_BIN=$HOME/palm/current_version/trunk/SCRIPTS
  

• pre-compiled (palmbuild) the UTILity programs and SOURCE code,
  
  
• run some small test simulations (JOBS, see Fig. 2).
  

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Somewhere near the end of the automatic installation process, the following lines should have appeared in your terminal:

PALM installation successful
...
PALM installer finished.

Further, the installer has printed an example command for starting a PALM simulation, e.g.

palmrun -r example_cbl   -a d3#      -c default       -X 4     -T 4

                |           |             |              |        |                
            run identifier  |  configuration identifier  |   tasks per node   
                     I/O control list             number of cores           

We have a GUI to create and submit the palmrun command (software requirements: QT4, python). Typing:

palmrungui

into the terminal opens the GUI:

Make your selections and click palmrun. A terminal window will appear with some messages. If this doesn't work, copy and paste the command into the terminal.

Create and run a new setup

(1) Create a new directory

  cd $HOME/palm/current_version/JOBS
  mkdir -p <new_run_identifier>/INPUT

(2) Create a new parameter file <new_run_identifier>_p3d with your own parameter settings under

  $HOME/palm/current_version/JOBS/<new_run_identifier>/INPUT

(3) Submit palmrun command

  palmrun -r <new_run_identifier>  -a d3#  -c default -X 4 -T 4

(4) The terminal output tells you if everything went fine, and if so, where to find the output files.