Environment Variables

This page documents environment variables that affect ParaView behavior at runtime.

Variable Description
PARAVIEW_DATA_ROOT Change the location of the data root for testing.
PARAVIEW_OVERRIDE_EXTRACTS_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY Override output directory used to save extracts.
PARAVIEW_USE_MPI_SSEND When set on the server processes, MPI_Send may be replaced with MPI_Ssend (useful for debugging purposes).
PV_DEBUG_PANELS When set, debugging text will be printed out explaining the reason for creation of various widgets on the properties panel (pqPropertiesPanel).
PV_DEBUG_REMOTE_RENDERING Forces server-side render windows to swap buffers in order to see what is being rendered on the server ranks.
PV_DEBUG_SKIP_OPENGL_VERSION_CHECK Skip test to validate OpenGL support at launch.
PV_DEBUG_TEST Prints debugging information about the testing framework during playback to stdout.
PV_ICET_WINDOW_BORDERS Force render windows to be 400x400 instead of fullscreen.
PV_MACRO_PATH Additional directories defined by the user to store macros.
PV_PLUGIN_CONFIG_FILE XML Plugin Configuration Files to specify which plugin to load on startup.
PV_PLUGIN_PATH Directories containing plugins to be loaded on startup.
PV_SHARED_WINDOW_SIZE Similar to PV_ICET_WINDOW_BORDERS except that the value is specified as WxH where W and H is the width and height for the render window.
PV_TRANSLATIONS_DIR Additional directories containing translations binary files.
PV_TRANSLATIONS_LOCALE Override the default language to load (needed for testing purposes).
QT_MAC_NO_NATIVE_MENUBAR Qt flag to force the Qt menu bar rather than the native mac menu bar.
VTK_DISABLE_OSPRAY Skip rendering support tests to enable OSPRay.
VTK_DISABLE_VISRTX Skip rendering support tests to enable VisRTX.
Obsolete Variable Description
PV_PLUGIN_DEBUG (obsolete) Use PARAVIEW_LOG_PLUGIN_VERBOSITY instead.
PV_SETTINGS_DEBUG (obsolete) Use PARAVIEW_LOG_APPLICATION_VERBOSITY instead.
PV_DEBUG_APPLY_BUTTON (obsolete) Use PARAVIEW_LOG_APPLICATION_VERBOSITY instead.
PV_ALLOW_BATCH_INTERACTION (obsolete) No longer needed.

ParaView supports generating logs that includes debugging and tracking information. The log messages are categorized and it is possible to temporarily elevate the log level for any category using the following environment variables. The value for each of the variables can be a number in the range [-2, 9] or the strings INFO, ERROR, WARNING, TRACE, or MAX (See vtkLogger for additional information about log levels).

Variable Description
PARAVIEW_LOG_APPLICATION_VERBOSITY Log messages related to the application (see vtkPVLogger::GetApplicationVerbosity())
PARAVIEW_LOG_CATALYST_VERBOSITY Log messages related to Catalyst (see vtkPVLogger::GetCatalystVerbosity())
PARAVIEW_LOG_DATA_MOVEMENT_VERBOSITY Log messages related to data movement for rendering and other tasks (see vtkPVLogger::GetDataMovementVerbosity())
PARAVIEW_LOG_PIPELINE_VERBOSITY Log messages related to Pipeline execution (see vtkPVLogger::GetPipelineVerbosity())
PARAVIEW_LOG_PLUGIN_VERBOSITY Log messages related to ParaView plugins (see vtkPVLogger::GetPluginVerbosity())
PARAVIEW_LOG_EXECUTION_VERBOSITY Log messages related to ParaView algorithms executions (see vtkPVLogger::GetExecutionVerbosity())