Troubleshooting M-Star Pre/Post start up

If M-Star Pre or Post does not start up, or immediately exits without showing an error code, this page is for you.

The most common issue is that software cannot initialize a 3D rendering device. This could be a misconfiguration issue or simply lacking the necessary hardware to drive 3D graphics in the environment.

The basic steps we will follow are outlined below:

  1. Verify you have 3D rendering hardware

  2. Verify the 3D rendering hardware is setup in your environment

  3. If still having issues, capture information from the environment to send to support for troubleshooting.

Windows

1. Check NVidia Devices

  1. Open a command terminal

  2. Run nvidia-smi --query-gpu=index,gpu_name,driver_model.current --format=csv

  3. Review output. Each GPU in the machine is listed with its driver model (WDDM or TCC).

  4. Is at least one GPU is mode WDDM mode specified?

    1. Yes: A valid 3D rendering device is present in the machine. Go to Check RDP 3D rendering settings section.

    2. No: None of the NVIDIA GPUs are setup for 3D rendering. Go to Check for CPU integrated 3D rendering devices section

2. Check for CPU integrated 3D rendering devices

You can check for an integrated CPU 3D rendering device using the below steps.

  1. Download TechPowerUp GPU-Z software available at https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ (Or equivalent software)

  2. Run downloaded executable (standalone mode is fine, no need to install)

  3. This software queries the system for any 3D rendering devices, including integrated graphics hardware.

  4. In the lower left corner of the screen, you can change which 3D rendering hardware is selected.

  5. The supported OpenGL version is shown in the lower right part of the screen.

  6. Check for any integrated graphics devices, eg. “Intel(R) UHD Graphics …”

  7. Does at least one device exist and supports OpenGL 3.2+ (excluding any Nvidia devices that are TCC mode as tested above)?

    1. Yes: A valid 3D rendering device is present in the machine. Go to Check RDP 3D rendering settings section.

    2. No: No 3D rendering hardware was found in the machine. Go to Options to resolve no 3D rendering device

3. Check RDP 3D rendering settings

  1. Open the Edit Group Policy tool from Control Panel or use the Windows Search dialog (Windows Key + R, then type in gpedit.msc)

  2. Browse to: Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Remote Session Environment

  3. Enable Use the hardware default graphics adapter for all Remote Desktop Services sessions

4. Options to resolve no 3D rendering device

  • Add another NVidia GPU to the machine and leave it in WDDM mode. NVidia recommends that all GPUs in a given computer should be the same, however in practice it has been found to be more forgiving than this. M-Star recommends that you select a GPU that can be operated by the same driver used by the existing GPUs in the machine. A simple way to find a GPU compatible with your existing NVidia driver is to go to https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/ , select the existing GPU you already have and refer to the Supported Products section. Use this list to select another GPU. You should also consider the available physical space in the computer case, available PCIE slots, and power requirements of adding this GPU.

  • Switch to Linux. Linux does not have a TCC/WDDM mode limitation like Windows, so the same devices you use for single and multi GPU runs in M-Star can drive the 3D rendering software. If remote access is required, consider using NICE DCV to make sure OpenGL works over the remote desktop session.

  • Switch the driver mode on an existing GPU to WDDM. Note that this will prevent the selected device from participating in multi-GPU M-Star runs. You may need to disconnect NVLINK from the selected GPU in order to ensure WDDM mode works.

5. Still having issues - Capture debug log information

Run the software from the command line to generate a log file in the user home directory. You can change the file path as needed. The command line arguments work for both MStarPost and Paraview.

MStarPost -l "%USERPROFILE%\mstarpostlog.txt",9

paraview  -l "%USERPROFILE%\paraviewlog.txt",9

Additional command to gather environment information:

nvidia-smi

Linux

Check NVidia driver installation

  1. Open a terminal and run nvidia-smi.

  2. You should see a table output in the terminal displaying the driver version and installed GPU hardware.

  3. If no table is displayed, or GPU is listed. Refer to NVidia driver installation instructions to verify correct installation.

Check OpenGL driver

  1. Open a terminal in the environment where you intend to start the GUI. If this is within an RDP session, start the RDP session and open a command terminal within that.

  2. Verify glxinfo command is available. Install operating system package if necessary. On most Linux distributions this is in the mesa-utils package.

  3. To check for OpenGL compatibility, run

glxinfo |grep OpenGL

  1. You should see some output that lists the physical GPU that is currently driving the display. The below is an example of glxinfo output showing good OpenGL support. Verify the OpenGL version string displays a number greater than 3.3 . It is 4.6.0 below which meets the requirement of M-Star CFD.

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 530.30.02
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 530.30.02
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: (none)
OpenGL extensions:

The output below is an example of glxinfo output that shows that we do not have OpenGL support. If you see terms like VMware, Mesa, llvmpipe, this indicates you are using software rendering driven by the CPU. The OpenGL version string also shows us we only have OpenGL v3.1 suport, which is not good enough for M-Star Pre or Post. This environment will not be able to start either program.

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 10.0.0, 256 bits)
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.8
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.1 Mesa 20.0.8
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.40
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.1 Mesa 20.0.8
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.10
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

Options to resolve no 3D rendering device

  • Reinstall NVidia driver and attempt to verify correct NVidia driver installation

  • If running over a remote desktop connection, refer to the documentation for the RDP software to verify correct OpenGL device configuration. Note that this may not work out of the box with common open source packages, which is why we recommend using NICE DCV.

  • If relying on a local X server with forwarding, verify that your SSH session has X forwarding enabled.

Still having issues, Capture debug log information

Run the software from the command line to generate a log file in the user home directory. You can change the file path as needed. The command line arguments work for both MStarPost and Paraview.

MStarPost -l ~/mstarpostlog.txt,9

paraview -l ~/paraviewlog.txt,9

Additional command to gather environment information:

nvidia-smi

glxinfo | grep OpenGL