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 Python for running: the minimal Python version required is 3.10 (since FRED v. 3.70).

Check your current version with:

$ python3 -V

Warning

It is often the case on many systems that ‘python’ and ‘python3’ refer to different python versions. FRED looks for python3 in your system: make sure that python3 is pointing to a Python version >=3.10. A good solution is to create a virtual env with an up-to-date Python version. Have a look at the official Python documentation on how to do that.

If you want to use the Python scripts that come 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), setup customization is achieved via environment variables. These variables are usually contained in a resource file. The FRED resource file is hidden in the user home folder .fredrc, which can be edited to change or fine-tune the installation manually.

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 define a default setup, and command line options can overwrite their effect. 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. A colon separates the paths 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 a log file during a simulation.

Tip

This can be overwritten in the 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 can be turned on using this environment variable. The command line option -C can also be used on a run-by-run basis.