After you have connected to an Analysis Portal node, your DCV or VNC viewer web page will display the node's Linux desktop. The desktop will contain an initial terminal window. Before running ParaView you must load a few modules into the environment. Issue the following command in the terminal window:

module load qt5 swr ospray paraview

The qt5 module is used to build ParaView's user interface. The swr module allows the graphical output of ParaView to be shown over the DCV or VNC connection. The ospray module provides ray tracing functionality for higher quality renderings in ParaView. Now issue the following command to start ParaView.

swr -p 1 paraview

In the Pipeline Browser you can see that ParaView is initially connected to its "built-in" server. We want to connect it instead to a separate data/render server running on our TACC nodes. To start such a server, we must create or select a server configuration. To begin the connection/configuration process:

• Choose File→Connect to show the server choosing dialog.
• The Analysis Portal automatically creates a configuration called "auto" for you to use. You should first attempt to use this configuration. If it fails to launch a ParaView server (as was the case on Stampede2 as of this writing), follow the remaining instructions to create and configure your own connection.
• To use an existing connection, select it and click "Connect".
• To create a new connection, click "Add Server" in the dialog. This creates a new configuration that can then be used during later ParaView sessions. Give the new server configuration a name and click "Configure".

Now you must complete and save the configuration, then use it to connect to the server. The configuration will specify that a pvserver process should be started on each core of our nodes.

• In the configuration editing dialog, set Startup Type to "Command".
• Enter this text as the external command (note that copy/paste does not work via VNC!):

  ibrun swr pvserver

• Click "Save" to complete the configuration.
• In the configuration choosing dialog, click "Save Servers" to save the configuration for later reuse via "Load Servers".
• Click "Connect" to connect to the server.

ParaView will now attempt to connect to the newly started server, and its progress may be displayed in the "Output Messages" dialog. When you see that the Pipeline Browser displays the new server connection, you can close the Output Message dialog.