Linux installation procedure

[klaatu]

On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, ytlee wrote:

> Thanks all who sent me the instructions. I tried them all. The following
> step from
> klaatu get the job done.

Thanks, more remarks are below.

> 
> > Try adding the directory containing the *.so files to /etc/ld.so.conf and
> > then run `ldconfig -v` -- you should see lots of libraries scroll past,
> > after that you may be able to get VTK to work.
> >
> 
> I used the instruction from Kitware, Linux-HOWTO
> (http://www.kitware.com/vtkhtml/vtkdata/VTK_Linux_WWW/vtk_body.htm
> up to "3.5 Final Steps"
> The exact steps are as follows, my vtk directory is /vtk :
> 
> 1.  cd    /etc
> 2.  vi  ld.so.conf
> 3.  add three lines
>         A.   /vtk/commom
>         B.  /vtk/graphics
>         C.  /vtk/imaging
> (I guess I have to include   /vtk/patented  )
> 
> 4. ldconfig  -v
>   (I don't what ldconfig  stands for)

ldconfig is "configure ld", `ld` is the GNU linker. From 'man ld':

       ld combines a number of object and  archive  files,  relo-
       cates  their data and ties up symbol references. Often the
       last step in building a new compiled program to run  is  a
       call to ld.

See also 'man ldconfig' -- to be brief, it finds all of the shared
libraries and determines where they will be linked at run-time. With Linux
shared libraries, when you compile you get a much smaller resulting
library for the particular application -- but this also means that when
you launch the application, it must complete the compile which has much
basis in other shared libraries. `ld` has to know where to find them all
-- usually setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH with full path-name will work, but if
you include the library directories in /etc/ld.so.conf, success is almost
certain.

You may wish to search in the /etc/rc.d (or maybe /etc/sysconf/rc.d) for
the initial call to 'ldconfig' (for me it is /etc/rc.d/rc.M) and change it
to read 'ldconfig -v' -- this will cause a verbose display of shared
libraries at boot time. This is useful because on some systems, MESA does
not want to work properly unless it sees the verbose list (I don't know
why). If you link against MESA shared libraries, you probably want to do
this. Also, if you have had questionable results from libraries which link
against MESA, you may wish to run `ldconfig -v` and make-clean and
re-configure and re-compile. (This is no guarantee of success, but might
help.)

> 
> 5. startx
> 
> 6. in the command shell, type
>   ../../tcl/vtk  Cone.tcl
> 
> My installation is on PII 400 with SCSI-2 and a S3 video card. It took over
> 12 hours to compile. Since some reported good result with AMD K3, I  went
> out and get a AMD chip to see if it cut down the compilation time. I must
> not done the switches right, it still took over 11 hours.

No surprise, that is a lot of software. Oh, best speed can be had from
such a combination as follows:

AMD K6/(2 or 3) MMX 400MHz
PC100 motherboard 100MHz with PC100 SDRAM

Note that 400MHZ clock rate divides evenly with 100MHz motherboard top
speed and is optimal for PC100 SDRAM memory.

I get very good speed from a Soyo PC100 board and 400MHz AMD K6/2 MMX.
Sorry, don't have benchmark data, but it is very fast compared to previous
computer, which was AMD 5x86 @ 133MHz; that computer took about 35 hours
to build VTK.

> 
> My switches are exactly like those in HOWTO. What did I do wrong (again)?

Again, that is a lot of software. I can only suggest that you should look
at start-up scripts for boot-time, you may have many processes running
which you don't need just to run VTK. As superuser "root", try 

ps aux > processes ; vi processes

and you will see a list of all processes running under all accounts --
make a list of what you are _sure_ doesn't need to be running, like maybe
"pgsql", "sendmail", "httpd", "inetd" (though you probably do want
"inetd"). Then cd to /etc/rc.d or maybe /etc/sysconf/rc.d (Red Hat does
things funny) and look for the start-up scripts that start those processes
at boot time, edit the scripts and add comment hashes (##) and reboot. You
will then have very few processes, and if when you compile you will
compile with

nice -n -19 make

Things may proceed more quickly. 

I hope this will help.

> 
> Lee
> 

    Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae.
Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow.      http://www.clark.net/pub/klaatu/



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