Step-by-step installation guide

This page describes the installation of PALM on a Linux system. We differentiate between two perspectives:

• the local host, which can be the local computer you are sitting at or the computer you are logged in via your terminal (ssh),
• the remote host, which is any remote computer with a batch system you have access to, but are not logged in at the moment. This could be the supercomputer at your High Performance Computing (HPC) facility. Your remote (super)computer immediately becomes your local host as soon as you access it via ssh.

1) ​Create a user account. This will serve as access to download PALM from the [link subversion (svn)] repository and to login to this trac server, e.g. to submit trouble tickets. Further, you will receive PALM news via mailing list. In case of any questions, please contact ​raasch@meteo.uni-hannover.de.

2) Check the software requirements.

3) Download and install PALM on your local and/or remote host.

Software Requirements

The installation and operation of PALM requires at minimum (for the advanced method on both, the local and the remote host, unless stated otherwise):

1. A Bash-shell must be available under /bin/bash.
2. A NetCDF library with version number not earlier than 3.6.3 (for NetCDF, see under ​http://www.unidata.ucar.edu).
3. A FORTRAN 2003 compiler (for gfortran, use version number 6.2.1 or higher).
4. The Message Passing Interface (MPI), at least on the remote host, if the parallel version of PALM shall be used.
5. On the local host, the revision control system subversion (see ​http://subversion.tigris.org), which is already part of many Linux distributions (e.g. SuSe). The user needs a combination of username and password to access the PALM repository. For getting a permit please create an account using the register form.
   

The advanced method additionally requires:

6. A job queuing system on the remote host. Currently, PALM can handle LoadLeveler (IBM-AIX) and NQS/PBS (Linux-Clusters, NEC-SX).
7. ssh/scp-connections to and from the remote host must not be blocked by a firewall.

Download & Installation