DataViewer Linux Instructions

General information

Whenever the configure script detects both OpenGL and Mesa installed on your computer, it supposes you want to use Mesa, and sets it by default. You must use the --without-Mesa configure option if you do not wish it to happen.

There is a bug in the current Python1.5.2 distribution under RedHat 6.* that causes some of the applications of DataViewer to crash. The solution for this bug is to recompile Python, which you may have to do anyway in order to have Tkinter working.

DataViewer has already been succesfully installed, compiled and executed on the following versions of Linux:

RedHat up to 7.0
Slackware 7.0.0 (Linux kernel 2.2.13, egcs 1.1.2)
Mandrake 7.0

Installation instructions:

Check that Python, tcl and tk packages are installed on your computer, and that Python is compiled with the Tkinter option on. For this, you need to edit the Python*/Modules/Setup file and comment out the lines concerning Tkinter. See your local Python instructions for more details. Notice that you may have to recompile Python to get rid of the bug described in the general information. After recompiling, you have to install the compiled version over the standard one, and you can do it from Python's source directory with the command
Check that you have a graphical library installed on your computer, like OpenGL or Mesa. For this, you can check the existence of libraries such as libGL.*, or libMesaGL.*.
Download the current.tgz from the distribution page, and decompress it.
Run the configure script and check that the Make.include file has been created and the information it contains is correct. If you need to reconfigure, be sure to delete the config.cache file first.
If the configure script fails, you can download this example of Make.include file for Linux, copy it under the name Make.include in the main directory of DataViewer, and edit it to make sure the information it contains is correct.
Compile DataViewer with the gmake command.
Set the DV environment variable to the path to the directory where DataViewer is installed.
If you are using the graphical library Mesa, set the GRAPHIC_LIB environment variable to Mesa and run the runme.sh script for a demo. See the user guide for more instructions on this demo.

Instructions for LCVM2 users:

You can either download the current.tgz from the distribution page, and decompress it, or get a CVS copy of DataViewer with the command
The CVS version of DataViewer is surely the most up-to-date one.
Be sure to use the /usr/lcvm/bin/python which is recompiled to get rid of the bug. The /usr/bin/python may still be the standard version with the problem. For this, the /usr/lcvm/bin must be in your PATH environment variable before the /usr/bin directory.
For the lcvmsg1 machine, you have to use the OpenGL library and the corresponding driver. For this, log on as root and go to /etc/X11 directory. Remove the link X, and then create a link named X to the X.GMX file (which is also a link). For this, use the commands:
You have to restart the X environment for the new link to become active. The GRAPHICAL_LIB environment variable must be set to OpenGL on this machine.

Dana Vrajitoru dana.vrajitoru@epfl.ch

Last modified: November the 7th, 2000.