Re: Problems installing netcdf-2.3.2

Hi Pietro,

> Hi Russ, do you remember me? I am Pietro Toschi and I wrote you last week 
> about
> a problem installing netcdf. Well, I actually fixed that problem: my xlc
> compiler was corrupted! Now it works well and I made a successful "make all",
> but troubles are going to come; when I issue "make test" I get this error
> message:
> 
> making `test' in directory /usr/local/netcdf/libsrc
> 
>         cc -c   -DNDEBUG -D_ALL_SOURCE -O cdftest.c
>         ar rcuv libnetcdf.a array.o attr.o cdf.o dim.o file.o iarray.o error.o
> globdef.o putget.o putgetg.o sharray.o string.o var.o  xdrposix.o
>         ranlib libnetcdf.a
> cc -O cdftest.o libnetcdf.a -o cdftest
>         ./cdftest > cdftest_out.new
> ncattget: attribute "TITLE" not found
> Assertion failed: file cdftest.c, line 393
 ...
> My machine is an IBM RS/6000 running AIX 3.2.5  w. XLC 1.3.0.0 and XLF 2.3

We have observed a problem with the optimizer in the C compiler of AIX
3.2. The default for our configure script is to specify optimization by
using the "-O" compiler flag, but that causes the netCDF library to be built
incorrectly under AIX 3.2, with the symptom that "make test" will fail even
though there are no compile or link errors when building from source.

A workaround is to build the netCDF library with CFLAGS="" (or "-g")
explicitly, by setting the environment variable CFLAGS to "" or "-g" before
invoking configure, or by using one of the other methods suggested in the
INSTALL file to prevent the use of the "-O" flag for compilation.

The specific file that is incorrectly compiled with "-O" is libsrc/string.c,
so another workaround is to recompile that file without "-O".

Delete the ncgen and ncdump executables before rebuilding, so they will get
rebuilt using the new library.

NOTE: This is no longer a problem on AIX 4.1.2.

> I also tryed to install netcdf-2.3.2 on a SGI Indy: It seemed to be all
> right, but when I issued "make install" I got the following error message:
> 
> making `install' in directory /usr/local/netcdf/fortran
> 
>         mkdir -p /usr/local/netcdf/include
>         chmod u+rwx,g+rws,o=rx /usr/local/netcdf/include
>         /sbin/install -c -m 664 netcdf.inc 
> /usr/local/netcdf/include/netcdf.inc
> /sbin/install: illegal option -c.
 ...
> I guess IRIX 5.3 does not support "install -c"

We tested the netCDF installation on IRIX 4.0 which used a BSD-style
install, but with IRIX 5.x, the flags on the install utility changed. To get
around this, you need to define the INSTALL configuration variable before
building netCDF from the source distribution. How to do this is explained in
the installation documents. INSTALL should be defined as

     /usr/bin/X11/bsdinst

which, according to the IRIX 5.2 man pages is an install that uses BSD-style
arguments. Then rerun the configure script and redo the make all.

Both of these questions are now answered in the netCDF Frequently Asked
Questions document at 

   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/netcdf/faq.html

______________________________________________________________________________

Russ Rew                                           UCAR Unidata Program
address@hidden                              http://www.unidata.ucar.edu