<h2>Description<aclass="headerlink"href="#description"title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Write a binary restart file of the current state of the simulation.</p>
<p>During a long simulation, the <aclass="reference internal"href="restart.html"><em>restart</em></a> command is
typically used to output restart files periodically. The
write_restart command is useful after a minimization or whenever you
wish to write out a single current restart file.</p>
<p>Similar to <aclass="reference internal"href="dump.html"><em>dump</em></a> files, the restart filename can contain
two wild-card characters. If a “*” appears in the filename, it is
replaced with the current timestep value. If a “%” character appears
in the filename, then one file is written by each processor and the
“%” character is replaced with the processor ID from 0 to P-1. An
additional file with the “%” replaced by “base” is also written, which
contains global information. For example, the files written for
filename restart.% would be restart.base, restart.0, restart.1, ...
restart.P-1. This creates smaller files and can be a fast mode of
output and subsequent input on parallel machines that support parallel
I/O. The optional <em>fileper</em> and <em>nfile</em> keywords discussed below can
alter the number of files written.</p>
<p>The restart file can also be written in parallel as one large binary
file via the MPI-IO library, which is part of the MPI standard for
versions 2.0 and above. Using MPI-IO requires two steps. First,
build LAMMPS with its MPIIO package installed, e.g.</p>
<divclass="highlight-python"><divclass="highlight"><pre>make yes-mpiio # installs the MPIIO package
make g++ # build LAMMPS for your platform
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>Second, use a restart filename which contains ”.mpiio”. Note that it
does not have to end in ”.mpiio”, just contain those characters.
Unlike MPI-IO dump files, a particular restart file must be both
written and read using MPI-IO.</p>
<p>Restart files can be read by a <aclass="reference internal"href="read_restart.html"><em>read_restart</em></a>
command to restart a simulation from a particular state. Because the
file is binary (to enable exact restarts), it may not be readable on
another machine. In this case, you can use the <aclass="reference internal"href="Section_start.html#start-7"><span>-r command-line switch</span></a> to convert a restart file to a data
file.</p>
<divclass="admonition warning">
<pclass="first admonition-title">Warning</p>
<pclass="last">Although the purpose of restart files is to enable
restarting a simulation from where it left off, not all information
about a simulation is stored in the file. For example, the list of
fixes that were specified during the initial run is not stored, which
means the new input script must specify any fixes you want to use.
Even when restart information is stored in the file, as it is for some
fixes, commands may need to be re-specified in the new input script,
in order to re-use that information. Details are usually given in
the documentation of the respective command. Also, see the
<aclass="reference internal"href="read_restart.html"><em>read_restart</em></a> command for general information
about what is stored in a restart file.</p>
</div>
<hrclass="docutils"/>
<p>The optional <em>nfile</em> or <em>fileper</em> keywords can be used in conjunction
with the “%” wildcard character in the specified restart file name.
As explained above, the “%” character causes the restart file to be
written in pieces, one piece for each of P processors. By default P =
the number of processors the simulation is running on. The <em>nfile</em> or
<em>fileper</em> keyword can be used to set P to a smaller value, which can
be more efficient when running on a large number of processors.</p>
<p>The <em>nfile</em> keyword sets P to the specified Nf value. For example, if
Nf = 4, and the simulation is running on 100 processors, 4 files will
be written, by processors 0,25,50,75. Each will collect information
from itself and the next 24 processors and write it to a restart file.</p>
<p>For the <em>fileper</em> keyword, the specified value of Np means write one
file for every Np processors. For example, if Np = 4, every 4th
processor (0,4,8,12,etc) will collect information from itself and the
next 3 processors and write it to a restart file.</p>
</div>
<hrclass="docutils"/>
<divclass="section"id="restrictions">
<h2>Restrictions<aclass="headerlink"href="#restrictions"title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>This command requires inter-processor communication to migrate atoms
before the restart file is written. This means that your system must
be ready to perform a simulation before using this command (force
fields setup, atom masses initialized, etc).</p>
<p>To write and read restart files in parallel with MPI-IO, the MPIIO
package must be installed.</p>
</div>
<divclass="section"id="related-commands">
<h2>Related commands<aclass="headerlink"href="#related-commands"title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
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