Environment Variables
The following lists environment variables that can effect the way MESA runs.
Essential
MESA_DIR
Location of the MESA source code.
GYRE_DIR
Location of the GYRE source code (only needed if running GYRE). If
you haven’t moved it from the $MESA_DIR
then set as
GYRE_DIR=$MESA_DIR/gyre/gyre
.
Recommended
OMP_NUM_THREADS
Number of threads MESA will run with. Should be between 1 and 2 * number of logical cores.
MESASDK_ROOT
Location of the SDK.
Optional
MESA_CACHES_DIR
Location where MESA will store and read cache files. See star_job.defaults cache directories for more details. Beware when using this and changing MESA versions; best practice would be to remove its contents upon changing versions.
MESA_TEMP_CACHES_DIR
Location where MESA will write the cache file temporarily before moving to
$MESA_CACHES_DIR
. If set, this folder MUST be unique for each
MESA run. If not set defaults to ./.mesa_temp_cache
.
MESA_OP_MONO_DATA_PATH
Location of the OP_MONO data files.
See the radiative levitation test suite
(located in $MESA_DIR/star/test_suite/radiative_levitation/inlist_radiative_levitation
)
for more details.
MESA_INLIST
By default MESA will look for a file called inlist
in the local
working directory for its configuration. This overrides the filename
and can point to a file somewhere else.
MESA_FORCE_PGSTAR_FLAG
If set, this shell variable will override the inlist variable pgstar_flag
.
If set to either true
or TRUE
MESA will act as if the user had set pgstar_flag=.true.
in their inlist.
If set to either false
or FALSE
MESA will act as if the user had set pgstar_flag=.false.
in their inlist.
If set to anything else (or not set at all) MESA will use the value as set in the inlists.
MESA_SKIP_OPTIONAL
If set then when running a test_suite case, then certain optional inlists will be skipped. If not set, then all inlists will be run.
Misc
Useful things that are not environment variables.
Command line arguments
./star
can accept one argument that overrides the location of the
inlist file. This will also override the environment variable $MESA_INLIST
.
./star some_other_inlist_file
skip_build
Empty file. If present in $MESA_DIR
then no compiling is done when ./install
is invoked.
If present in a sub folder (e.g $MESA_DIR/eos
) then no compiling is done in the sub-folder.
skip_test
Empty file. Similar to skip_build
, but this will skip the compile time tests.
If placed in a sub-folder, then only the tests in that folder are skipped.
Private
These options are for developers; you do not need them for normal usage. If you use them and things break then stop using them.
MESA_DIR_INTENTIONALLY_EMPTY
Bypass checks done at compile time for checking if $MESA_DIR
is set.
MESA_TEMP_CACHES_DISABLE
If set, then we do not use the temp cache mechanism, writing cache
files directly to the $MESA_DIR/data/
folder.
MESA_ERROR_BACKTRACE_DISABLE
If set, disables the generation of backtraces when we call mesa_error()
.
This is mostly helpful on macs, as they don’t generate useful backtraces.
MESA_FPE_CHECKS_ON
When set to 1 this will turn on a series of compile time checks as well as certain inlist options designed to catch floating point exceptions. This should not be set during a normal run.
MESA_TEST_SUITE_RESOLUTION_FACTOR
If set to a value other than 1, then mesh_delta_coeff
and
time_delta_coeff
will be multiplied by its value, and
max_model_number
will be multiplied by its inverse.
For example, this can be set to 0.5 to double the space and time resolution
as well as the maximum model number.
During a normal run, this should be either set to 1, or not set.