LIGOtools and GDS DMT on Debian GNU/Linux

Note: This page is incomplete and out of date. Hopefully I will get it updated and completed soon. Sorry. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions.

These are notes that I have made installing the LIGO LIGOtools and Data Monitoring Tools (DMT) (part of the LIGO Global Diagnostics System (GDS)) on a Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (sarge) AMD64 system.

I have found that sarge amd64 has recent enough versions of most necessary libraries and packages which can be installed directly from the Debian sarge binary distribution repositories using APT.

General DMT installation information can be found at the DMT Download page, and some RedHat linux specific installation notes can be found at this DMT on RedHat page.

John Zweizig has also made two install scripts to help with the installation, one for ROOT and one for GDS/DMT:

Both of these scripts will be used during the installation.

The installation will proceed as follows:

  1. Install libraries and packages from APT
  2. Install LIGOtools
  3. Install ROOT
  4. Install GDS/DMT
  5. Configure user path
  6. Build the documentation

Machine specs:
name: zajos
motherboard: Tyan Thunder K8S PRO S2882 with dual Opteron 244 1.8GHz CPU's
memory: 2GB DDR PC3200 RAM
OS: Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, linux kernel 2.6.8-11-amd64-k8-smp


Install development tools and libraries via APT

I began by installing all freely-available software development tools and libraries necessary for GDS/DMT:

root@zajos:~# apt-get install gcc binutils gzip autoconf automake1.9 libtool m4 make perl zlib1g libbz2-dev cvs

Install LIGOtools

GDS requires the installation of LIGOtools. We will not go in depth into a LIGOtools installation here, since comprehensive installation instructions can be found at the LIGOtools install page. However, I will provide a brief run-down of what I had to do to get it installed and running (which required a little bit of non-standard tweaking due to our use of a 64-bit system).

We install LIGOtools (and all software not handled by the APT package management system) in /opt, in this case /opt/ligotools.

user@zajos:~$ mkdir /opt/ligotools_install
user@zajos:~$ cd /opt/ligotools_install
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools_install$ wget http://www.ldas-sw.ligo.caltech.edu/ligotools/ligotools_init/ligotools_init_2.4.tar
...
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools_install$ tar xvf ligotools_init_2.4.tar
...
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools_install$ ./ligotools_init
...

The next step would usually be to install a ligotools distribution of tclsh and wish. However, the tclshexe and wishexe binaries provided by ligotools are 32-bit, and will therefore not run on our 64-bit system. We could compile them from source, but fortunately Debian provides both tclsh and wish (ie. tk) in APT:

root@zajos:~# apt-get install tcl8.4 tk8.4

Unfortunately, the ligotools package management system needs to know what version of tclexe is installed. The way we do this is by "installing" the Debian version tcl and tk into the ligotools system by symlinking it into a tclexe ligotool package directory as follows:

user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ mkdir -p /opt/ligotools/packages/tclexe/debian/bin
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ ln -s $(which tclsh) /opt/ligotools/packages/tclexe/debian/bin/tclshexe
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ ln -s $(which wish) /opt/ligotools/packages/tclexe/debian/bin/wishexe
user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ ligotools_activate tclexe debian

You can now configure your environment for the new ligotools install by sourcing the configuration file. In BASH:

user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ eval $(/opt/ligotools/bin/use_ligotools)

Finally, run the ligotools_update script to install all the ligotools packages. user@zajos:/opt/ligotools$ bin/ligotools_update

Install ROOT

ROOT is available for download here. We will be using the ROOT install script mentioned in the intro:

[user@zajos:~]# mkdir /opt/cern
[user@zajos:~]# cd /opt/cern
[user@zajos:/opt/cern]# wget http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~jzweizig/dmt/DMTProject/root-make
...
[user@zajos:/opt/cern]# chmod 744 root-make

The installed script must be edited to specify a couple of installation variables.

[user@zajos:~]# cvs -d :pserver:cvs@root.cern.ch:/user/cvs login
Logging in to :pserver:cvs@root.cern.ch:2401/user/cvs
CVS password: cvs
[user@zajos:~]# cvs -d :pserver:cvs@root.cern.ch:/user/cvs export -r v5-00-01 -d root-5.00.01 root
[user@zajos:~]# cd root-5.00.01
[user@zajos:~]# 
[user@zajos:~]# 

Install DMT

Configure user shell path

Users of LIGOtools and DMT need to have have the path to the various tools in their shell path.

eval `/opt/ligotools/bin/use_ligotools`

Build the documentation

The DMT online documentation is built from the source distribution as follows:

[user@zajos:/opt/gds]# apt-get install doc++
[user@zajos:/opt/gds]# make docs
[user@zajos:/opt/gds]# mkdir /path/to/webserver/root/dmt
[user@zajos:/opt/gds]# ln -s doc /path/to/webserver/root/dmt/

Last modified: Wed Jun 27 01:25:09 EDT 2007