Run FOQUS

The specific command to launch FOQUS depends on the operating system.

To launch FOQUS, open the Anaconda prompt (or appropriate terminal or shell depending on operating system and choice of Python), and run the following commands:

conda activate ccsi-foqus
foqus

Alternatively on Windows you can start FOQUS by double-clicking on the “ccsi-foqus” Desktop shortcut created when FOQUS was first installed. That shortcut can be recreated at any time by opening a terminal, as described above, and starting FOQUS with the “make shortcut” option:

foqus --make-shortcut

Note

The first time FOQUS is run, it will ask for a working directory location. This is the location FOQUS will put any working files. This setting can be changed later.

Note

Files passed as command line arguments to FOQUS will be relative to where FOQUS is run. Once FOQUS starts, file paths will be relative to the FOQUS working directory.

Running FOQUS without a graphical interface (“batch” or “headless” mode)

The default usage mode for FOQUS is through its graphical interface, or GUI. However, it’s still still possible to use FOQUS in situations where a graphical interface is not available and/or practical, such as batch computing (e.g. in an HPC cluster) or automation (e.g. within a script).

To enable this mode, set the QT_QPA_PLATFORM environment variable to one of the supported values before starting FOQUS, e.g., for the Bash shell:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=minimal

Note

If FOQUS is not configured to enable batch/headless mode as described above, the following error messages might occur when starting FOQUS:

PyQt5 or Qt not available

or:

qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, webgl, xcb.

If, on the contrary, a graphical interface is desired but the errors above occur, it is possible that the system is not yet configured to support graphical applications. In this case, try installing the libgl1-mesa-glx and/or libxkbcommon-x11-0 packages using the package manager appropriate for your Linux distribution (i.e. apt-get install on Ubuntu).