About

A step-by-step guide for running ANSYS v190 on any Linux distribution within a CentOS 7.3 docker container.

Requirements

• docker
• x11docker (optional, but recommended)
• Ansys v19.0 installation files

Install

Install x11docker

Simply run the following command in the terminal.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mviereck/x11docker/master/x11docker \
| sudo bash -s -- --update

Install and setup docker

1. Install docker.
   For more information on how to complete this step, visit https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/.

2. Create the docker group

   sudo groupadd docker
   

3. Add users to the docker group. For that, replace <username> with the actual username

   sudo usermod -aG docker <username>
   

   Log out and log back in so that group membership is re-evaluated.

   Note
   If you’re running Linux in a virtual machine, it may be necessary to restart the virtual machine for changes to take effect.

4. Verify that you can run docker commands without sudo.

   docker run --rm hello-world:latest && docker image rm hello-world:latest
   

Setup the docker container

1. Build the CentOS 7.3 docker image.

   docker build - --no-cache --tag local/centos7.3-ansys-v190:latest < Dockerfile
   

2. Put the ANSYS installation files somewhere you can access, e.g., $HOME/Downloads. It is likely that the files are compressed (e.g., zip or tar.gz). If so, decompress them.

3. Create the installation directory in the host machine.

   sudo mkdir /opt/ansys/v190
   

4. Run a docker instance to perform the installation. The easiest way is using run-install.sh. The script requires the installation directory as its first argument.

   ./run-install.sh <PATH_TO_ANSYS_INSTALL_DIR>
   

5. It will prompt a shell inside the container. The shell will start at the installation directory. Go to the desired folder and run the installation script.

   ./INSTALL -debug
   

   Note
   Remember to install it into /opt/ansys_inc.

6. After installing, exit the container.

Running Ansys workbench (optional)

This step depends on x11docker. x11docker is a convenient way of running GUI application inside docker containers. If you choose to skip this step, then you are on your own.

After installing x11docker, run ./ansys190-wb2 to use access the Ansys Workbench.

Troubleshooting

1. It may happen that ANSYS will complain about libfontconfig.so.1. If it happens, search for libfreetype in your /ansys_inc directory and rename it to something else. It really does not matter the new name. The intention is to remove this library from LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The following code snippet will search for the library in your ansys_inc directory and rename it by appending .bak.

   find <PATH_TO_ANSYS_INC> -iname libfreetype* -type f -exec mv {}{,.bak} \;
   

2. If fonts appear to be weird, try to install some fonts on the host. On Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04, the following works fine

   sudo apt install fontconfig xfonts-base xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-cyrillic
   

License

This repository is licensed under the terms of the MIT license. For further information, see the LICENSE.