Install NGSolve from the source on Windows Subsystem for Linux

Hi,

I am trying to install NGSolve on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). I have strictly followed the guide to build from the source onto Debian/Ubuntu on WSL with using a Debian/Ubuntu terminal on Windows 10. However, I am not able to run any python script in the python_tutorial file after the NGSolve is successfully installed. The message always shows up “Segmentation fault”. For a detailed example, it shows:

NETGEN-6.2.2103-30-g44d72073
Developed by Joachim Schoeberl at
2010-xxxx Vienna University of Technology
2006-2010 RWTH Aachen University
1996-2006 Johannes Kepler University Linz
Problem in Tk_Init:
result = no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable
optfile ./ng.opt does not exist - using default values
togl-version : 2
no OpenGL
loading ngsolve library
NGSolve-6.2.2103-23-g27f2b0149
Using Lapack
Including sparse direct solver UMFPACK
Running parallel using 8 thread(s)
importing NGSolve-6.2.2103-23-g27f2b0149
(should) load python file 'mesh.py'
loading ngsolve library
NGSolve-6.2.2103-23-g27f2b0149
Using Lapack
Including sparse direct solver UMFPACK
Running parallel using 8 thread(s)
Segmentation fault

I have checked that my python version is 3.7.3 in the Debian/Ubuntu on WSL terminal environment. On the other hand, everything works well with the Windows installer on my Windows 10 laptop. So I am wondering if NGSolve does not support to be built from the source on WSL environment yet. Does anyone have experience in working with WSL and how to solve the problem?

Possibly of interest;

i’m doing something similar, using same version of Ubuntu libs, setting up on an unsupported Linux disto.

initially i got this…


Problem in Tk_Init:
result = unknown color name “BACKGROUND”
togl-version : 2
no OpenGL

fixed by searching for TK issues and found this fix…


xrdb -load /dev/null
xrdb -query

not sure why and isn’t the same for you, but maybe same technique will work.