Wednesday, June 17, 2009

CentoOS: problem to install Abacus 6.8

When I was installing Abacus 6.8 on CentOS 5.2 x86_64 I run into three problems. The first one was that installation script did not recognize my Linux distribution (i.e. CentOS 5.2), the second was that that after successful installation, I could not start freshly installed abacus because of missing one library, and the last problem was that the GUI would not start. Below more details on these problems are given, along with my solutions to them.

1. Unable to determine Linux Distribution

When a user (or a root) wants to install Abacus 6.8 on CentOS 5.2, at the beginning of installation process the error appears: "Unable to determine Linux Distribution". In another words, CentOS is not supported and the user should use Red Hat Enterprise or SuSE. The full list of the supported distributions is in the contents of the error and the error itself is shown below:
Checking system requirements for installation. This will
take just a moment...


***ERROR: One or more system tests have failed the minimum installation
requirements. The installation procedure will not continue.
Hit to view the output from this system check.

Checking for GNU Lib C version 2.3.2 or newer.
Pass - Found GNU Lib C Version 2.5.
WARNING: Problem parsing /etc/redhat-release to determine version of Red Hat.

Running system configuration checks for Linux/x86-64.
Please wait until all the needed information has been gathered...

System requirement status is:

Requirement: SuSE 9.3, 10.0, 10.1 or 10.2, SuSE Enterprise Linux 9.0
or 10.0, SuSE Enterprise Desktop 10, Red Hat Enterprise
3.0, 4.0 or 5.0, or Fedora Core 6.0
Products: All Abaqus Products
Status: Fail - Unable to determine Linux Distribution.

Requirement: GNU Lib C 2.3.2 or greater
Products: All Abaqus Products
Status: Pass - Found GNU Lib C 2.5, which was installed with
glibc-2.5-24.rpm.

Not all requirement checks succeeded.
The solution to this problem is quite easy. After going through some installation scripts, I found that, they relay on the file /etc/redhat-release. This file can be found in RHEL and CentOS. Therefore, instalation script checks the contents of this file, and if it does not find something familiar e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 5, the error occurs and the installation stops. In CentOS 5.2. the contents of this file is just one line:[W@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 5.2 (Final)
Therefore, what can be done is to change this file temporary, just for the purpose of the installation of Abacus. I just add "Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 5" as a second line /etc/redhat-release and the installation script should worked.
The installation went good, no more problems. The other two problems occurred after successful installation, when I wanted to start Abaqus.

Error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5

I installed Abaqus in /opt/abaqus68. During the first attempt to start Abaqus CAE or Viewer I got the error that there are was no libstdc++.so.5 library:[W@localhost ~]$ /opt/abaqus68/Commands/abq682 cae
/opt/abaqus68/6.8-2/exec/ABQcaeK.exe: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Abaqus Error: Abaqus/CAE Kernel exited with an error.
This problem was easily solved, because CentOS 5.2 DVD comes with this library. So, I just installed it using pirut. To be specific I installed the following rpm: compat-ibstdc++-33-3.2.3-61.x86_64

Insufficient system resource available.

After installing the missing library, the finall error was "ValueError: Insufficient system resource available."[W@localhost ~]$ /opt/abaqus68/Commands/abq682 cea
Abaqus License Manager checked out the following license(s):
"cae" version 6.8 from abaqus.some.example.com
<6>.
ValueError: Insufficient system resource available.

Abaqus Error: Abaqus/CAE Kernel exited with an error.
Abaqus Error: Abaqus/Viewer exited with an error
This problem has something to do with X11 server and graphics hardware acceleration. My server does not have 3D graphic card, so no chance for hardware acceleration. The solution was to disable it by starting abaqus with and option -mesa:/opt/abaqus68/Commands/abq682 cae -mesaor/opt/abaqus68/Commands/abq682 viewer -mesaFinnaly, after some time spent on installing and starting Abaqus I and other users could use it:

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:35 AM

    Thanks! But did you try to install Abacus on Ubuntu server?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:32 PM

    I think that the same happens in Fedora. Any way, I try. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete