This document is a subset of the IRIS Explorer Installers' Note and is intended as a quick reference to installing IRIS Explorer EVALUATION licences (see the section on Licence Types below) on a single machine. For more detailed information or other requirements (such as network licensing or cross-platform licensing) please refer to that document. Note that to run IRIS Explorer you will need a valid licence. If you do not have this, you may wish to apply for one (see Licence Installation below) before commencing the installation procedure.
The minimum hardware and software versions for the Unix platforms supported by IRIS Explorer are detailed below.
| Platform | Operating System | C Compiler (optional) |
| Linux (Intel) | RedHat 5.1 | egcs-1.1.1 |
| DEC | Digital Unix 4.0d | C++ 6.1 |
| HP | HP/UX 10.20 | aCC A.01.15 |
| IBM | AIX 4.2 | xlC 3.1.4 |
| SGI | IRIX 6.2 - 6.5 (n32) | C++ 7.2.1 |
| Sun | Solaris 2.6 | SunPro 4.2 |
The approximate disk space requirements (in Mb) for IRIS Explorer on Unix are:
| Main System | 60 |
| Modules | 130 |
| License materials | 15 |
| Unsupported modules | 37 |
| On-line documentation | 18 |
| TOTAL | 260 |
The use of IRIS Explorer is controlled by the FLEXlm network license management system (FLEXlm is a registered trademark of Globetrotter Software Inc.). The installation requirements of FLEXlm depend on the type of license you have purchased from NAG. There are two types of licence available for IRIS Explorer.
Follow the instructions below to install an EVALUATION licence. You can also find more detailed information about licence installation in the Installers Note, delivered with the system.
You should be logged in as root to install the software. An automated installation is included on the CDROM. To run it, execute the explorer.install script on the CD. For example, if the CD is mounted at /cdrom you should type:
cd /cdrom ./explorer.install
This script will install IRIS Explorer into a single directory which you will be prompted for. The installation script can be used to install all the IRIS Explorer subsystems or just a subset.
Several environment variables need to be set for IRIS Explorer users. In order to simply run IRIS Explorer, you only need to set EXPLORERHOME to point to the directory where IRIS Explorer is installed.
Other environment variables can be found in explorer/sample.cshrc. This file can either be 'source'd by users, typing:
source /usr/explorer/sample.cshrc
or, preferably, copied to the end of the user's .cshrc file.
When building modules, there is a set of variables which may be used to control the operation: EXPLORERUSERHOME, CXINSTALLSTRIPPED, CXINSTALLSYMBOLIC, CXBUILDSHARED. See sample.cshrc for a discussion of these.
To run IRIS Explorer you must install a FLEXlm license. If you have an EVALUATION licence, you can follow the instructions below to licence IRIS Explorer. Otherwise, refer to the Installation Notes to find out how to set up a FLEXlm license server.
FLEXlm is a network licensing system. The licensing software can, if required, run on one computer on the network and provide licenses to other computers when NAG applications are run. It is also possible to use license managed applications on computers not on a network, but the license will be appropriate for only that computer. Demonstration licenses do not use the networking facilities of FLEXlm.
You will need to obtain the 'hostid' of the license server and NAG will issue a SoftKey that will work on this computer. The hostid may be determined after installing IRIS Explorer by running the FLEXlm utility program 'lmutil', with argument lmhostid.
SoftKeys for demonstration licenses have only a single FEATURE line like this:
FEATURE IRIS_Explorer none 4.000 31-jan-1999 0 CBDA2041DC1BC45D2B68 DISK_SERIAL_NUM=6058c6c2
This enables the use of version 4.0 of the application IRIS_Explorer until the end of January 1999 on the system with the specified hostid. Note that, if required, a line can be broken by inserting a backslash ('\') before the newline character like this.
FEATURE IRIS_Explorer none 4.000 31-jan-1999 0 \ CBDA2041DC1BC45D2B68 DISK_SERIAL_NUM=6058c6c2
The text of the license key should be placed in a file (say, /usr/local/explorer/license/license.demo). The location of this file must be made known to the NAG application by setting the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE to the full pathname of the file before the application is invoked.
For example, in the C-shell, type:
setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE /usr/local/explorer/license/license.demo
in the Bourne shell, type:
LM_LICENSE_FILE=/usr/local/explorer/license/license.demo export LM_LICENSE_FILE
Once you have completed the installation (in, for example, /usr/explorer), you can test some basic functionality as follows:
source /usr/explorer/sample.cshrc explorer -map $EXPLORERHOME/maps/simple.map
This draws a simple 3D model which you can rotate with the mouse. Try any other maps in the $EXPLORERHOME/maps directory.
Configuration Files
The file $EXPLORERHOME/Explorer.config contains configuration information for IRIS Explorer and is read on start-up. It contains the default locations of modules and maps, establishes module categories, and sets the shared memory arena size. This file is global to the host machine. Configuration requirements that are private to a user can be set in the file .explorerrc in the user's home directory. An example is provided in the file $EXPLORERHOME/sample.explorerrc, and more information on the format of the file is contained in Appendix A of the IRIS Explorer User's Guide.
Running Modules over a Network
It is possible to distribute an IRIS Explorer application across a heterogenous network, with modules running on a variety of workstations and PCs. To discover how to do this, please refer to Appendix A of the IRIS Explorer User's Guide.