Command line arguments

When VisIt is run from the command line, you may provide several optional arguments that influence how it is run. Here is a complete list of those arguments along with descriptions of what they do. The various command line arguments are divided into several categories. Clicking on the links below will display the arguments for the selected category.

- Program arguments
- Window arguments
- Parallel arguments
- File arguments
- Version arguments
- Viewer arguments
- Debugging arguments

Program arguments

VisIt can have multiple user interfaces. At present, VisIt has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a Command Line Interface (CLI). These arguments allow you to choose between those interfaces.

-gui | Run with the Graphical User Interface. This is the default.
-cli | Run with the Command Line Interface. This allows you to run Python scripts that control VisIt.
-movie | Run with the Command Line Interface with a movie making script. When you give this option, you must also provide -sessionfile or -s arguments.

Window arguments

These arguments control the size, location, colors, and style of VisIt's GUI and viewer.

-small | Forces the viewer to use a smaller window area.
-geometry spec | Specifies the portion of the screen to use. This is a standard X-Windows geometry specification.
-style style | Specifies the Window style to use. This is one of the following: windows, cde, motif, sgi.
-background color | Specifies the background color for the GUI.
-foreground color | Specifies the foreground color for the GUI.
-nowin | Runs VisIt without viewer windows.

Parallel arguments

VisIt provides several options that control how the compute engine is launched and run in a parallel computing environment. None of these options apply for the serial version of the compute engine.. These options allow you to specify the number of processors and nodes on which the compute engine is run. You can also specify options that are useful to running the compute engine in a batch environment.

-par | Select the parallel version.
-l method | The launch method to use. This is platform dependent. Use mpirun on SGI systems. Use psub or poe on AIX systems.
-np processors | The number of processors to use.
-nn nodes | The number of nodes to allocate
-p partition | The partition to run in.
-n name | The parallel job name.
-b bank | Bank from which to draw resources.
-t time | Maximum job run time
-forcestatic | Forces VisIt's compute engine to use static load balancing.
-forcedynamic | Forces VisIt's compute engine to use dynamic load balancing.

File arguments

VisIt provides a couple options that allow you to specify default data files or script files to process when VisIt starts.

-s scriptname | This argument runs the specified VisIt script. Note that this argument only takes effect if the -cli argument is also specified.
-o filename | Attempts to have VisIt open the specified data file. Note that the data file need not be located on the local machine. If the file is located remotely, the filename must be of the form: hostname:filename.
-sessionfile filename | This argument tells VisIt's GUI or movie making script to load the specified session file.

Version arguments

These arguments allow you to run a different version other than the newest installed version of VisIt. Note that these arguments are only useful if multiple versions of VisIt are installed.

-beta | Run the current beta version if one exists.
-v | Run the specified version.
-dir | Run the version in the given directory.

Viewer arguments

These arguments apply only to VisIt's viewer and are primarily for internal use. Most users will not need to use these arguments.

-noconfig | Prevents VisIt from reading configuration files.
-noint | Disables interruption capability.

Debugging arguments

When VisIt's debugging argument is specified, VisIt opens a set of log files into which it writes progress reports. The log files are useful for determining the flow of program control or where any failures occurred. Most users will not need to use these arguments.

-debug level | Runs VisIt in debug mode producing different levels of detailed output. There level must be between 1 and 5.