Cannot connect to X server using docker on OSX

Question

I am trying to install openFoam on Mac OS X 10.10.5 (http://www.openfoam.com/download/install-binary.php) by using Docker-toolbox. I can do without problems all the suggested steps, but then, when I try to run the example included in the installation guide, I cannot open paraFoam, since it returns the following error:

paraview: cannot connect to X server

I have also installed XQuartz but it doesn't seem to help much!

Answer 1

Why don't you get the latest paraview from Kitware. It has a native OpenFOAM reader built-in, which I always use. The only thing you have to do, instead of calling

paraFoam

is to create an empty file with a foam extension. Like so:

touch foo.foam

Then you can run start paraview like any other mac application, browse to to the respective case-directory and "open" the empty foo.foam file:

paraview foo.foam

If you would like to use a command similar to paraFoam or paraview in the command line, then use your command line to change into the Paraview.app and find paraview, which is the actual executable. Create a symbolic link pointing to that executable. I do the same, since I like to use the latest paraview instead of the one provided with OpenFOAM.