McIDAS User's Guide
Version 2016.1

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Preparing the Workstation

Before installing McIDAS-X, verify that the workstation is configured to the specifications listed in the table on the previous page. Then go to the section below that applies to your configuration and complete its instructions.


Unix Workstations

Read the two sections below and complete the tasks that apply to your configuration.

Enabling Inter-Process Communication

On Linux and Solaris systems, the system administrator should use the command ipcs to verify that your workstation configuration has Inter-Process Communication (IPC) enabled in the system kernel. If IPC is not running, rebuild your system kernel with all IPC functions enabled.

Allocating Sufficient Shared Memory

McIDAS-X uses shared memory for frame allocation. On some operating systems, the shared memory facility is activated by default and has a sufficient maximum segment size for most McIDAS-X sessions. However, this is not always true for Solaris and Linux systems. Therefore, on Solaris and Linux systems the system administrator must check and, if necessary, force the kernel to activate the shared memory system at boot time and set the maximum segment size to 512 MB or greater the first time McIDAS-X is installed on a Solaris or Linux workstation.

Checking for Required Packages

On Linux systems, the libX11-devel, libXt-devel, libXpm-devel, libXext-devel, ncurses and ncurses-devel packages must be installed in order for McIDAS-X to build successfully. You can run the command below as user root to check for the packages and install them if they are not already present.

Type:   yum install libX11-devel libXt-devel libXpm-devel libXext-devel ncurses ncurses-devel

If the compilation fails due to a missing library or header file, you can run the command below (where "file" is a regular expression identifying the missing library or header file enclosed in quotes, e.g., "*/Intrinsic.h") as user root to have yum report the required package name.

Type:   yum whatprovides "file"

Then run this command to install the required package:   yum install package


Mac OS X Workstations

Read the two sections below and complete the tasks as instructed.

Allocating Sufficient Shared Memory

McIDAS-X uses shared memory for frame allocation. On some operating systems, the shared memory facility is activated by default and has a sufficient maximum segment size for most McIDAS-X sessions. However, this is not always true for Mac OS X systems. Therefore, on Mac OS X systems the system administrator must check and, if necessary, force the kernel to activate the shared memory system at boot time and set the maximum segment size to 512 MB or greater the first time McIDAS-X is installed on a Mac OS X workstation.


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