Installation¶

MICRESS¶

System requirements¶

MICRESS® is supported for the following 64 bit operating systems:

• Windows 10
• OpenSUSE 15.2
• CentOS 7.9
• Ubuntu 20.04 (LTS)

As suitable hardware configuration for MICRESS® simulations, we recommend either a PC (for starters), preferably with a quad-core CPU of the current series, and min. 8 GB RAM. For multiple instances of MICRESS running on the same system, a workstation or server with more CPUs, high memory bandwidth and 64 GB main memory is recommended. "Real" MICRESS simulations may take a few days and even more. Be aware that this computer is busy during that time and the hardware has to be sufficiently reliable to operate continuously for days.

In particular, it should be noted that MICRESS® runs only on x86 compatible processors, i.e. standard Intel or AMD processors and not on processor architectures such as PowerPC, Itanium or others.

MICRESS benefits from a good single thread performance. The versions of MICRESS which made use of thread level based parallelization benefit also from multicore architectures. The percentage of parallelized regions depends on the simulation settings.

Step 1: Download¶

The MICRESS support (support@micress.de) will provide download details.

Download the provided installer for Windows (.exe) or Linux (.run), and the example result archives as desired. The result archives include pre-calculated results for the examples. They are not necessary for running MICRESS but useful for previewing results.

After downloading run the MICRESS setup assistant directly from the directory where it was stored. This is necessary to find the external result archives. Use user or administrator rights depending on where you want to install the software.

MICRESS setup assistant

Step 2: License agreement¶

Read the MICRESS license agreement carefully.

MICRESS license agreement

You will have to accept the terms of the license agreement in order to proceed with the installation.

Step 3: Component selection¶

MICRESS components

Enable the components you like to install.
'Program Files' offers MICRESS linked or not linked with the Thermo-Calc TQ library for accessing thermodynamic and diffusion data from databases. It does not hurt to install both. Some default packages will be installed always, e.g. MICpad, DP_MICRESS, license management software.
'Examples' allows to install input only, i.e. 'Driving Files', or pre-calculated results, too.

Step 4: Single-user vs multi-user setup¶

Choose whether to install MICRESS for your current user only or for all users on your computer.

Step 5: Installation directory¶

Choose a destination directory for MICRESS to be installed to.

Under Windows, the default installation folder depends on the single-user or multi-user setup, i.e. users home or system program folder. Under Linux, it will always be your home directory. Notice that you can click the folder icon next to the path input to browse for an alternative installation directory.

Directory browser

Step 6: Desktop shortcuts¶

Choose whether or not to create shotcuts to the MICRESS executables on your desktop.

Step 7: Software license¶

Specify the location of your software licenses.

Licenses determine which MICRESS modules will be available to you and how many concurrent MICRESS processes you may start.

MICRESS uses two types of licenses.

1. A MICRESS license is mandatory to run MICRESS.
2. A Thermo-Calc license is optional and may be used to enable coupling between MICRESS and the Thermo-Calc thermo-dynamic database.

Acquiring MICRESS will provide you with one or two license files depending on your MICRESS package. License files may either be stored in the file system on your computer (standalone installation) or used for license management on a dedicated license server (network installation).

According to your license solution, enter either the file path to your license file or the hostname of your license server. Make sure to prepend hostnames with @.

After installation it is possible to change this license connections by setting the following user profile or system environment variables:

• ACMICRES_LICENSE_FILE=@<your FlexLM license server>
• LSHOST=<your Thermo-Calc server>

In a standalone installation without any license management processes, the locations of the license files have to be given directly, e.g.

• ACMICRES_LICENSE_FILE=”D:\MICRESS_Bin\FlexLM\MICRESS_license.lic”
• LSHOST=no-net
• LSERVRC=”D:\MICRESS_Bin\Safenet\lservrc”

License Server¶

If you acquired a standalone license, this section can be skipped.

A network license requires the installation of the according license management systems. The license server software, resp. installer packages, are stored in the FlexLM, resp. Safenet, subfolders during MICRESS installation.

In principle, it is not necessary to install the full MICRESS package on a license server. However, it is recommended for quick testing of the license managers.

FLEXnet Publisher (MICRESS)¶

Windows¶

An easy way to setup a Windows service for FlexNetPublisher it to use the graphical front end 'lmtools.exe' with administrator rights.

Set the following options.

'Service/License File' tab:

• Configuration using Services
• LMTOOLS ignores license file path environment variables

'Config Services' tab:

• Service Name (e.g. 'acmicres')
• Path to the lmgrd.exe file: see FLEXlm directory
• Path to the license file: file sent by the MICRESS support (*.lic)
• Path to the debug log file: file name for a log file.
  Make sure that a local Windows service has write permissions to the file, e.g. a subfolder in %SYSTEMDRIVE%\ProgramData.

• Enable 'use services' and optionally 'Start server at power up'
• Save the service

Switch to the ‘Start/Stop/Reread‘ tab, pick the service you have just saved and start it. For verification, it is useful to click on the 'Server Diags' and to check if the server works correctly.

Linux¶

On Linux, it is recommended to start the license manager 'lmgrd' from the command line, resp. including this startup in the system boot process.

lmgrd -2 –p –c  <license file> -l <log file>

Where the 'license file' is the file which you receive from the vendor and the 'log file' is a new file to store the demons log messages.

The license manager itself will start a second process for the vendor daemon 'ACMICRES'. The license manager can be run as any user. It is recommended to run it not with root privileges for security reasons. The startup has to be added to respective boot scripts to make it persistent.

All Flexera license management tools are linked to the 'Linux Foundation Base'. On some systems, it might be necessary to install the 'lsb-core' packages for 32 and 64 bit.

Installing the lsb-core package

Ubuntu:  sudo apt-get install lsb-core
CentOS:  sudo yum install redhat-lsb-core

The FlexLM utility ‘lmutil’ is a general purpose tool to stop and run diagnostics on the license manager.

• 'lmutil lmdown' : stops the license manager demon process. Alternatively, the entire lmgrd process may be finished by “kill ”
• 'lmutil lmdiag' : performs diagnostics
• 'lmutil lmhostid [ hostname | internet ]' : provides important information about your computer necessary for the licensing (see FLEXNetPublisher License Administrator in the guide for more information).

Firewall¶

For communication between the server and the clients a TCP/IP connections will be enabled. The license manager log file provides information about the used ports.

The port numbers used by the main service and the vendor daemon may be edited by your license administrator in the server lines. The default, if port is not specified, is chosen by the operating system at run-time. Sites with Internet firewalls need to specify the TCP/IP port numbers license management uses.

SERVER servername host-id [<port number>]  
VENDOR ACMICRES [ PORT=<second port number> ]

Port specifications are optional (indicated by [] - do not type the brackets). A valid port number is any unused port number between 0 and 64000. On UNIX, choose a port >1024, since those <1024 are privileged port numbers. Please make sure that both ports are not blocked by any firewall between server and client.

Safenet Sentinel (Thermo-Calc)¶

If Thermo-Calc is already setup, MICRESS will make use of this license manager to access thermo-dynamic data files.

It is necessary to add a license feature for Thermo-Calc's TQ library usage to your existing license. Usually, the support will provide you with a merged license.

See the Thermo-Calc installation guide. A copy of installation files at MICRESS release time can be found in the 'Safenet' directory as a fallback. It is recommended to use the most recent Safenet Sentinel license manager provided with your Thermo-Calc installation.