20010920: McIDAS-X install (cont.)

>From: "Patrick O'Reilly" <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Northern Iowa
>Keywords: 200109172140.f8HLeL128622 McIDAS-X 7.80

Patrick,

>I have installed McIDAS-X on a Sun Sparc running Solaris 8, and have 3
>other identical networked machines to install as well.  Not being a
>networking or UNIX guru, is there an easier way to install on the other
>3, assuming they are on the same network, than going through the install
>process on all 3?  I will have to do the initial preparations on all, I
>know.

It seems to me that doing the build/install for McIDAS-X alone (you don't
need/want to setup XCD on any machine other than the one running the LDM)
is pretty easy:

o create 'mcidas' account                               (have to do in any case)
o setup environment variable definitions in .cshrc file (have to do in any case)
o FTP the distribution
o unpack the distribution:

  cd ~mcidas
  chmod +x mcinstall
  ./mcinstall
  cd mcidas7.8/src

o edit the McIDAS makefile and change:

  VENDOR=-vendor

  to

  VENDOR=-gcc

o build the distribution:

  make mcx

o install the distribution:

  make install.mcx

To cut down on the editing required, you could simply copy .cshrc from
one machine to the next ASSUMING that the HOME directory of 'mcidas' is
the same on each.  You could also simply copy the modified makefile
from the machine on which you originally built McIDAS to each of the
other machines.  This would be after you unpack the distribution on
each, of course.

I guess the issue for you is one of making sure that each machine has
gcc and f2c (and f2c.h and libf2c.a) installed.  Since you have gone
through this once, it should be easy:

o create the /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/bin, and /usr/local/include directories
  and put libf2c.a, f2c, and f2c.h in their respective place

This will have to be done before building McIDAS, but it should only
take about 5-10 minutes for all three machines.

Now, _if_ the 'mcidas' HOME directory was identical on all machines,
then you could simply copy everything in ~mcidas from one machine to
the next.  You can _not_ do this if the HOME directories are different,
however, because the McIDAS GUI application, mcwish, gets the location
of the Tcl/Tk libraries (~mcidas/tcl/lib) "burned" into it.  If HOME is
not identical from machine to machine, then the GUI will not work on
the machines to which the distribution is copied.

The other thing you may consider, is sharing the 'mcidas' home file
system among all of your machines (via NFS).  This would really cut
down on the maintenance you would have to do when bugfixes and
additions are made to the distribution (collectively known as
Addenda).  The primary installation would need to be on the machine
that is running the LDM, but everything else would be finessed.

Tom