[Paraview] Parallel ParaView - pvserver crash with EnSight file

[Paul Urbanczyk]

Hello,

I've been having trouble using parallel paraview to process EnSight 
data, and am hoping someone on this list might help. I've done a lot of 
searching through the archives, and seen similar problems, but have not 
been able to track down how they were solved or what the cause was.

My situation:

I'm running a simulation with Star-CCM+ version 6.06.011, and am 
exporting data in EnSight Gold (.case) format. While the current 
simulations I'm running are small (< 1 mil cells), I will eventually 
scale up, thus I'm looking into post-processing with Paraview in 
parallel. Star-CCM+ successfully exports the .case file and the 
associated variable files. These files are valid and readable by EnSight 
(9.2.2).

In trying to read these files with Paraview, I follow the process:

1) Start pvserver on the remote machine (where my data is) with "mpiexec 
-np 4 pvserver --use-offscreen-rendering" (this is the osmesa version of 
pvserver, by the way)
2) Create an ssh tunnel to the remote machine from my local machine
3) Open Paraview on my local machine, and connect to the pvserver on the 
remote
4) Open the case file

Up until this point, everything runs smoothly. pvserver seems to start 
fine and waits for connection from the client, and Paraview starts up 
fine and connects to the server. Furthermore, when I select the .case 
file to open, Paraview successfully creates a .case object in the 
pipeline browser, and the variables appear in the Cell/Point Array 
Status list in the object inspector.

However, when I hit "apply" on the object inspector to actually import 
the variables, one of two things happens. Either, (1) the pvserver will 
crash (seg fault), or (2) the data appears to be read and an outline of 
my domain/data is displayed.

In case (1), I notice that the statistics inspector actually shows that 
data has been read, but the pvserver has crashed, and I have to close 
down and restart.

In case (2), the statistics inspector shows data has been read, as does 
the information tab in the object inspector. However, if I try to apply 
any other representation other than outline, the pvserver immediately 
crashes again (seg fault).

I originally thought this might be an issue with the EnSight reader, but 
now I'm thinking this may have to do with either the mpi implementation 
or the osmesa implementation.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,

Paul