First ensure that the paths to ecFlow executables are accessible.
At ECMWF this is done using use command. Hence type the following at the command line.
> use ecflow

Create a directory called course in your home directory and change to that directory.

> mkdir course; cd course
In order to use ecFlow we first need to start the ecflow_server

Shared Machine

On a shared machine multiple users and ecFlow servers can coexist. Start an ecflow_server:
by typing the following
> ecflow_start.sh
This will start an ecflow_server running on your system with a port number unique to your user ID.
With this script ecFlow log files and check point files are created in the directory $HOME/ecflow_server.
This can be changed by using:
> ecflow_start.sh -d $HOME/course
Please keep a note of the Host and Port given from your ecf_start.sh output for later.
The host and port number uniquely identify your ecflow_server.
When you want to access this server using ecflow_client, Client Server API
or ecflowview you need to know these information.
By setting the value of the environment variables ECF_NODE and ECF_PORT you
identify the server you wish to access. Multiple ecflow_server‘s can run on the same system.

Local Machine

We prefer to start the ecFlow server with the ecflow_start.sh script to help prevent unintentional
shared usage of the server. You could have used the default ECF_PORT and started a server running
on your own local machine using the following command:
> ecflow_server

at the unix prompt.

This will start an ecflow_server running on your system with a default host name of “localhost” and
port number of 3141. If another program on your machine is using this same port number, then you will get
an “Address in use” error. To start the server on a specific port number you can use:
> ecflow_server --port=3500

or:

> export ECF_PORT=3500; ecflow_server
ecflow_server log files and check point files are created in the current directory by default, and have
a prefix <machine_name>.<port_number>. As this allows multiple servers to run on the same machine.
If you had previously run the same ecflow_server in the past it will also attempt to recover the suite definition
from the check point file.

What to do