Essential Information about Flux 2022.2

Essential information about Flux 2022.2
In order to use the version, you need:
  • Altair Units License file Version 22.0
  • Altair License Manager (ALM) Version 15.0
  • Altair License Utility (ALMUtil) Version 15.0

Flux 2022.2 is available for Windows and Linux OS:
  • Windows 10 Professional
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle 8.4
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3.
    Attention: In Flux PEEC, this Linux distribution does not support the MUMPS LU Preconditioner of the Compression solver for inductive computations. Please use a different Linux distribution or another preconditioner. Further details available in Upgraded Compression solver for inductive computations in Flux PEEC.

The Linux version is qualified with the Gnome Classic with X11 display server. It is highly advisable to use the Gnome Classic with X11 display server to run Flux on Linux.

Flux 2022.2 takes into account the feedback from several users, and around 30 customer issues have been fixed in this version.

The Windows installers of Flux and FluxMotor are merged into one installer.

As FluxMotor is not supported on Linux, the Linux installer contains only Flux.

Distributed computing with MPI is available in Flux for Windows and Linux and can be used with PBS. However, qualification on Windows cluster connected with InfiniBand has not been done and Linux clusters are highly recommended for parallel computing.

It is possible to install Flux on Windows or Linux without administrator rights with limited functionalities.

Update of log4j from 1.2.17 to 2.17.1 due to security vulnerability.

About CDE Licensing: Before using CDE, please check that the environment variable for the license: ALTAIR_LICENSE_PATH is set as system environment variable.
Warning: If ALTAIR_LICENSE_PATH is set as user environment variable only, CDE will fail. For CDE to work properly, ALTAIR_LICENSE_PATH environment variable must be set as system environment variable.
About the CDE/CSS user temporary directory %TEMP%:

(The user temporary directory is by default: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp)

If there are a lot of files in the user temporary directory (according to our tests, "a lot" means more than 50 000 files, but it could be lower or higher on your computer), then CSS and CDE services will not start. In order to fix this issue, please follow the procedure described below:
  1. Delete unnecessary temporary files, for instance:
    • Using Windows Storage Sense
    • Using another tool
    • Manually…
  2. Restart your computer
  3. Reinstall CSS and CDE:

    Run as administrator the executable file: Active_Distributed_Computation_and_API.bat

    This file is located in the directory: <Installation Directory>\flux\Flux\Bin\prg\win64

Minimum memory required:
  • For Flux 2D: 8 GB of RAM
  • For Flux 3D, Skew and PEEC: 12 GB of RAM