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prereqs & installation |
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This page has information to help you prepare for using MESA. It is important to remember that MESA is under construction -- and probably will be for the indefinite future.
Several screencasts that will visually guide you through these instructions are available. You may want to take a look!
Before you use MESA, you should get a feel for what it can do.
For a brief summary of the capabilities of MESA, take a look at this presentation by Matteo Cantiello. (He has also provided a Keynote version.)
MESA's full capabilities are documented in the instrument papers. Looking through the figures will give you a feel for the broad range of problems that can be studied using MESA.
- Paper 1 (Paxton et al. 2011)
- Paper 2 (Paxton et al. 2013)
- Paper 3 (Paxton et al. 2015)
- Paper 4 (Paxton et al. 2018)
- Paper 5 (Paxton et al. 2019)
The "how-to" documentation is largely embedded in the experience of the community of users. Therefore the first step to becoming a MESA user is to join the mesa-users mailing list. (Click the preceding link and complete the "Subscribing to mesa-users" section of the form.)
If you need help, you should post your questions to mesa-users. You should also search the mailing list archives to look for similar questions that may have been asked in the past. Once you begin to know how to use MESA, please help by responding to posts on the list.
Take a look at the maps below to see the locations of MESA users. To have your location added, email Frank Timmes.
MESA requires:
- Mac or Linux operating system (Windows users may want to try MESA-Docker)
- 64-bit processor
- 8 GB RAM
- 20 GB free disk space
Most laptop or desktop computers built in the last three years will satisfy these requirements.
Before you can install MESA, you need the prerequisites. The MESA SDK provided by Rich Townsend provides a prebuilt set of compilers and run-time libraries that should make your MESA install go smoothly. Visit the MESA SDK website for the details of setting it up.
We strongly recommend using the SDK and support is limited if you don't.
If you would prefer to build MESA without the SDK,
replace the file $MESA_DIR/utils/makefile_header with
$MESA_DIR/utils/makefile_header_non_mesasdk and adapt it
to your system.
Regardless of what compiler and operating system you use to install MESA, its output should be bit-for-bit identical. If it's not, Bill considers it to be a bug. (This has been the case since Release 5819 in early January 2014.)
The simplest way to get the MESA software is to download a zip file of the latest MESA release.
The compressed file is about 1GB, so don't worry if it takes a little while to download. If the download is slow, you may want to change which mirror you are using. (After you select a zipfile to download, click the "try another mirror" link near the top of the page.)
The unzipped and installed package will be large, so make sure you have at least 20 GB free on your disk.
When you unzip the file, it will create a directory named
mesa-r{{site.version}}. This will be your main MESA directory. You
are free to rename it, just make sure to set MESA_DIR accordingly
(see the next section).
You can also download zip files of older MESA releases. If you plan to do so, please read this FAQ entry.
If you'd prefer, you can instead checkout a copy of MESA from its git repository, using the command:
git clone https://github.com/MESAHub/mesa
git checkout r{{site.version}}
Note that there might be newer versions out there in the git repository, but they are probably untested, unstable, and generally not at all what you want, so please stick to the officially released ones. To repeat: always check out a tag that starts with a r and then follows an official MESA release. The repository is large so if you need to have multiple copies of the repository please clone from your local copy instead of repeatedly cloning from github.
The old SVN repository can be found at: [zenodo]:https://zenodo.org/record/4745225 this is only needed if you need a unreleased version of MESA before r15140, all development after r15140 can be found on github.
The easiest way to make sure that your system is always configured
appropriately is to define the necessary environment variables in
your shell start-up file. The file that you need to edit
will depend on which shell you're using.
You can find out by running echo $0.
The default on most Linux distros is bash,
in which case you need to edit $HOME/.bashrc.
If you don't
set the environment variables in your shell start-up file, you will
need to re-define them each time you open a new shell.
The exact paths depend on where you installed MESA and
which operating system you are using. After you add these
commands to your shell startup file, don't forget to open a new shell
(or source the startup file in an existing one).
You will need to mix and match different aspects of the following example configurations depending on your shell, your operating system, and your installation method.
Here is an example from a machine that uses bash as its shell (and
hence uses export to set variables):
{% highlight bash %}
export MESA_DIR=/Users/jschwab/Software/mesa-r{{site.version}}
export OMP_NUM_THREADS=2
export MESASDK_ROOT=/Applications/mesasdk source $MESASDK_ROOT/bin/mesasdk_init.sh {% endhighlight %}
If your machine uses csh as it's shell, replace export with setenv.
One caveat is that if you put the MESA SDK in your shell profile, you'll always be using the MESA SDK supplied version of GCC, which may be a compatibility issue if you work with other other codes. Alternative (unsupported) initialization scripts are available here.
Now we are ready to compile the code. This will take a little while, so do something else for a bit or get up and get a cup of coffee.
cd $MESA_DIR
./install
Note that there is no reason to use sudo. The MESA install does not
require root privileges. Once MESA has finished installing,
you should receive the message
************************************************
************************************************
************************************************
MESA installation was successful
************************************************
************************************************
************************************************
If so, move on to "getting started". If not, take a look below.
Read the linked page that summarizes some best practices to keep in mind throughout the lifecycle of your project.
First, confirm that you can reproduce the error. Do
cd $MESA_DIR
./clean
./install
and see if you get the same error.
One of the most common issues is unset or incorrectly set environment variables. In the same terminal window where you are trying to install MESA, execute the command {% highlight bash %} echo $MESA_DIR {% endhighlight %} and if you're using the MESA SDK, execute the command {% highlight bash %} echo $MESASDK_ROOT {% endhighlight %} Confirm that these show the directories where you have installed MESA and the MESA SDK. If not, please re-read the instructions on how to set your environment variables.
Please check that you followed the MESA SDK installation instructions. Pay particular attention to the prerequisites for your system.
Check to see if there is any information about your problem in the MESA FAQ.
If you are using the MESA SDK and are having a problem with installation, you should also consult the MESA SDK FAQ.
Search the mailing list archives to see if someone has had a similar problem before.
If the previous steps have not solved your problem, send an email to [email protected] describing the problem.
Please provide the following information in your message (don't attach screenshots):
-
What version of MESA are you trying to build?
-
Are you using the MESA SDK? If so, what version?
-
Describe your computer (machine type, operating system, operating system version).
-
What is the output of each of the following commands?
uname -a
gfortran -v
echo $MESASDK_ROOT
echo $PATH
echo $MESA_DIR
- What error message did you recieve? In addition, please attach
the full
$MESA_DIR/build.logfile.
If the error message you received was ./build_and_test FAILED also
attach the file $MESA_DIR/MODULE/test/tmp.txt, where MODULE is
replaced with the name of the module that failed. The name of the
module that failed should be printed on the line before the
./build_and_test message was printed.
If the file tmp.txt does not exist in the folder then run the tester program
./tester 2>&1 | tee tester.log
and also attach tester.log file to your mesa-users message. If the
tester program does not exist, say so in your message.