Confusion that Quickstart (deb package) can not find MPI?

Installing preCICE
,
1

Quickstart should be the easiest installation method, but I’m stuck at the very first step (embarrassed). I haven’t found this issue on the forum, so I hope to seek guidance and help.

(1) As shown in fig.2, my first problem is that mpi is already installed on the system, but mpi-default-dev is missing. After I tried sudo apt update, I executed the installation command again, but mpi-default-dev is still missing.

fig2
fig2906×357 67.5 KB

(2) My second question is, if I still want to install Precice via .deb files, how can I install PETSc? It seems that the “sudo apt install” method doesn’t work, as shown in fig.3.

fig3
fig31344×1016 200 KB

I am not familiar with linux and precice, so some questions may seem too basic. I would like to start by installing and getting familiar with precice v2.3.0 on this virtual machine, so that I can later install it on a CentOS 7 cluster. Someone told me that the “Building from source” method is the most reliable, but I still want to try the quickstart method. Thank you in advance for your help and time.

2

First of all: be warned that you are running on very old systems. Ubuntu 20.04 will soon reach end-of-life (April 2025), while CentOS 7 already reached EOL in June 2024. preCICE v2.3.0 is also already three years old. If you are doing a short project, that should not be too much of a hassle. If you are starting a longer project, I would strongly advise you to upgrade everything.

With that said, you are probably missing a sudo apt update before all the sudo apt install commands.

3

Thanks for your key reminder, I will try to upgrade all the system and use a higher version of precice. Just now, I tried the “sudo apt upgrade” command and my system upgraded from Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS. There is a problem with the network at now, and I need to fix it.

While, as i said in (1) and fig.2, i have tried “sudo apt update”. After that, i used the sudo apt install commands, and got the same results. Just now, i used the sudo apt install commands in Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS, and got the same results, too.

4

Note that the apt update, apt upgrade, and apt dist-upgrade are different commands, doing different tasks:

  • apt update finds information about packages from the internet
  • apt upgrade upgrades packages, but staying in the same Ubuntu version (e.g., 20.04)
  • apt dist-upgrade upgrades to a new Ubuntu version (e.g., 24.04)

I think it would help a lot if you have a local system administrator to talk to and discuss what you need.

5

Thanks again @Makis, I will deal with the system upgrade as you told and talk with relevant administrator. At present, does it mean that it is not possible for a quick installation of .deb files on my Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS system？

6

For preCICE v2, it should be possible:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ./libprecice2_focal.deb

where libprecice2_focal.deb the exact name of the file.

Why this does not work on this system, is something to discuss with the admins.

7

okay, thank you Makis, best wishes.

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