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UmarAbubacar authored Nov 10, 2023
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## Exporting visualisations on HPC's
Some HPC systems may not allow users to export visualisations using the paraview exporter. To bypass this issue there are two options.

By default, BioDynaMo uses ParaView for visualization, which needs an X-display server to function. Since the Singularity image does not provide a graphical desktop environment and hence no X-server, there are two workarounds.

### Option 1: Using xvfb
Start a virtual frame buffer with:
```xvfb``` stands for X virtual frame buffer and emulates the required display server. Start a virtual frame buffer with:
```
/biodynamo/util/xvfb-initd.sh start
```
The buffer can be managed by the arguments ```start```|```stop```|```restart```
The buffer can be managed with the arguments ```start```|```stop```|```restart```

Note: Some systems may require display forwarding **before** starting the frame buffer. This can be achived through ```export DISPLAY=0```.

### Option 2: Setting Paraview to work in a headless mode using the CMAKE flag
Paraview with the osmesa or EGL backend does not require an X-server. To change the backend, you have to edit the cmake options in [1], build paraview, and replace the ParaView version that BioDynaMo installs. See also [2].

[1] https://github.com/BioDynaMo/biodynamo/blob/HPC-documentation/util/build-third-party/paraview/build.sh

[2] https://discourse.paraview.org/t/pvpython-offscreen-rendering-segfault/246/3

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