Installation

Once you have a self-extracting compressed archive of FRED distribution, namely fred_3.*.*.run, make it executable:

$ chmod +x fred_3.*.*.run

and run the installer:

$ sh fred_3.*.*.run

and follow the instructions. You can install FRED wherever you like on your system. Typical options are:

single-user: everything is installed in the user file tree below the $HOME folder
server-wide: the distribution will be installed on the server so that all users can see and use the same version of FRED. You need admin privileges to run this installation.

You can always go back to the script that manages the installed distributions present on your system using:

$ fred -manage

Python environment

FRED needs a very basic python installation for running, namely python >=3.0 is required. Check your current version with:

$ python -V

If you want to use the python scripts that are coming with FRED distribution for quick visualization and post-processing of 3D maps, you have to install the numpy and matplotlib packages.

Environment variables

In Unix-like operating systems (e.g. Linux or MacOSX) customization of setup is achieved via the use of environment variables. These variables are usually contained in a resource file. The FRED resource file is a hidden file in the user home folder .fredrc, which can be edited to manually change or fine tune the installation.

In Windows the same functionality is achieved using the System Registry. The environment variables are stored as subkeys of the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Fred-MC\fred. These values can be visualized and changed using, for instance, the Registry Editor application.

Note

You could edit environment variables also using a simple GUI:

fred -config

New in version 3.60 : work in progress!

Environment variables are used for defining a default setup and their effect can be overwritten by command line options. Example of a typical .fredrc file:

export FRED_GPU_AVAILABLE=1
export FGE_CL_PLATFORM=0
export FGE_CL_GPULIST=0,1
export FRED_MAX_THREADS=12
export FRED_SEARCHPATH=~/fred/myPlugins:/usr/local/shared/fredScripts
export FRED_VERBOSE=0

Available options are:

FRED_MAX_THREADS = N: Set the number of POSIX threads to be used for CPU execution. This is the typical number of threads used for particle tracking. Other parts of the code can use fewer threads to accomplish their tasks.

FRED_GPU_AVAILABLE = 1|0

If 1, tell FRED that one or more GPUs are available for calculation.
If 0, no GPU available or do not use any GPU, even if installed on the system.

FGE_CL_PLATFORM = N: Tell FRED GPU Engine (FGE) to use OpenCL platform N for GPU computation.

FGE_CL_GPULIST = dev0, dev1, …, devN: Specify a list of GPU devices that can be used for computation

Tip

On a system with 4 installed GPUs, use devices: 0, 1 and 3:

export FGE_CL_GPULIST=0,1,3

FRED_SEARCHPATH = dirList: Specify a list of directories where files are looked for. The paths are separated by a colon as in the standard shell variable $PATH.

Tip

Add to the search path a directory containing a series of plugins and a local repository of scripts:

export FRED_SEARCHPATH=~/myFredPlugins:/usr/local/shared/fredScripts

FRED_VERBOSE = {0..5} (def. 3): Specifies the global verbosity level, i.e. the amount of information displayed in the terminal and saved to log file during a simulation.

Tip

This can be overwritten in input file:

verbose: all {0..5}

FRED_ANSI_COLORS = t|true: Tell FRED to pretty-color the output to the terminal. By default coloring is off, and it can be turned on using this environment variable. The command line option -C can also be used on a run by run basis.