Automatically receive an email when an OpenFOAM simulation is complete

August 24, 2013 | 1 Minute Read

OpenFOAM runs can take a long time. Wouldn’t it be nice to know when a simulation is done without having to keep checking the terminal? As it turns out, this is very easy to set up with Python (I got most of the code I used from here, which details how to send an SMS). Simply create a script called send_email.py in the OpenFOAM case directory that looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/python

import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
server.starttls()
server.login("<username>", "<password>")

msg = MIMEText("The simulation is complete.")
msg["Subject"] = "Simulation finished"
msg["From"] = "Me"
msg["To"] = "Me"

server.sendmail("Me", "my_email_address@gmail.com", msg.as_string())

Replace all the relevant info with your own. Note that this assumes you’re using Gmail, but it can be adapted to any SMTP server. The script could also be expanded to email team members, extract information about the run, etc.

Change the permissions such that the file can be executed as a program, then at the bottom of your Allrun script add

python send_email.py

Voila. Now you’ll get an email when your simulation finishes, and can go off and be productive elsewhere in the meantime.