Frequently Asked Questions
Run Time Problems
- Q1.1: How do I install a package on IRIX?
- Q1.2: I can't view the man pages...
- Q1.3: packages are too big to download...
- Q1.4: I get this error after installation: (/bin/sh: ... mkindex.sh: not found ...)
- Q1.5: I'm getting "missing prereqs" when installing on IRIX 6.2
Miscellaneous
- Q2.1: prog: rld: Fatal Error: (library version mismatch)...
- Q2.2: prog: rld: Fatal Error: (cannot successfully map soname)...
- Q2.3: gcc 2.8.x can't find 'as'.
- Q3.1: Could you please add package X?
- Q3.2: How about open source packages for older IRIX versions?
- Q3.3: How can I order a freeware CD?
- Q3.4: What is package X? How do I run/configure it?
- Q3.5: Is freeware Y2K compliant?
- Q3.6: I want to contribute to SGI/freeware...
Installation Problems
- Q1.1: How do I install a package on IRIX?
- Open source comes in
.tardist
extension files.tardist
files aretar
archives ofinst
(SGI auto-install) files. They normally install automatically when you click on them in your browser. If you have an old IRIX system (6.2) or you didn't have auto-installation configured in your browser this auto-installation may fail to work in which case you may follow the following manual procedure:% tar xvf xxxx.tardist (untar that tardist file) % su (become superuser) # inst -f . (install from current dir) inst> go inst> quitAutomating this process:
The utilitytardist
does all the above automatically. If you don't have it you may download it from:http://www.sgi.com/Support/DriveUpdate/patch_down.htmlTo configure your browser to support auto-install (i.e. callingtardist
orSoftwareManager
automatically when you click on a.tardist
file on the web) you should have two entries added to your mailcap file (either your personal~/.mailcap
or the system one/var/netscape/.../mailcap
or/usr/local/.../mailcap
or equivalent) depending on your browser version.application/x-install; \ /usr/sbin/SoftwareManager -a -F %s ; \ description="SGI automatic software installation" application/x-tardist; \ /usr/sbin/SoftwareManager -a -f %s ; \ description="SGI software distribution archive"All this should work out of the box on recent IRIX releases. It is just on older IRIX systems (6.2) that you may need to go through the manual procedure.- Q1.2: I can't view the man pages...
- All packages come with the full original documentation if it exists. However they are configured to install their man pages under
/usr/freeware/...
which is a non-standard location to search for man pages. To make this work, you must tell theman
program to search there.You may do it either by setting
MANPATH
using something like:% setenv MANPATH /usr/freeware/catman:/usr/freeware/man:/usr/catman/local:/usr/local/man:/usr/share/catman:/usr/share/man:/usr/catman:/usr/man(note the added/usr/freeware/catman
location).Or simply follow the instructions on the SGI Freeware web page which recommend running the utility
fixpath
.fixpath
is included with every package asfw_common.sw.fixpath
. You should runfixpath
only once to update your personal startup files. Once you runfixpath
you should re-login for it to take effect (or directly execute your fixed startup files(e.g: source ~/.cshrc)
) from your shell.- Q1.3: packages (like XEmacs 20.4) are too big to download...
- HTTP implementations seem to time out and fail on slow links and big files. The symptom is getting a timeout or some error message like "premature EOF" from Software Manager during the unpacking of the
tardist
file.A good solution is to use FTP intstead of HTTP.
You may access SGI/freeware via FTP using any of the following methods:
- Use ftp://freeware.sgi.com/index.html instead of http://freeware.sgi.com/
- Use an FTP client to connect to freeware.sgi.com where the whole content of the web site is available via ftp.
- Click on the Switch to FTP link in the top level web page to switch your browser to the FTP protocol during your visit to the SGI/Freeware site.
- Q1.4: While installing
[old-package]
I get this error:/bin/sh: \//usr/freeware/relnotes/shared/mkindex.sh: not found ERROR: Command "( \\$rbase/usr/freeware/relnotes/shared/mkindex.sh )" failed (return status 127, subsystem XXXXX.man.relnotes 1022574820)- You may safely ignore this message. This is an old package (from Freeware release 6.2). Some of these old packages were not re-packaged for the current Freeware release. Instead, they were simply recycled "as-is". The error is benign and is a result of a typo in the exitop. The software itself should run fine.
- Q1.5: I'm getting "missing prereqs" when installing on IRIX 6.2
- Most likely, you're missing n32 libraries. Many of these are not installed by default on IRIX 6.2 (later IRIX versions should be OK). For example, in the case of
XEmacs
, if you get an error message like:Install Base Execution Libraries (N32) (1232792133 - 1239999900) (not on current distibution).This means you should installcompiler_eoe.sw32.lib
-- it should be on your distribution CDs.The other suggested resolutions boil down to "upgrade to a newer version of IRIX", which is probably overkill (But still a good idea! :-)
Run Time problems
- Q2.1: When I run gnuplot, I get the following message:
gnuplot: rld: Fatal Error: object libpng.so from liblist in gnuplot has version "sgi1.0", which does not match the found object: usr/lib32/libpng.so (with version "sgi2.0")
- Two possible solutions:
Substitute
- Best for the long run: Upgrade to a more recent version of
libpng.so
(or upgrade IRIX to 6.5)- Fastest/simplest solution (csh/tcsh example): Tell
rld
to ignore versions in this particular case:alias gnuplot 'env _RLD_ARGS=-ignore_all_versions gnuplot \!*'gnuplot
with your failing program name if it is different.- Q2.2: When starting XEmacs (or another n32 package)
I get this error (or similar):prog: rld: Fatal Error: cannot successfully map soname 'libXpm.so.1' under any of the filenames /usr/lib32/libXpm.so.1:/lib32/libXpm.so.1:/usr/libn32/libXpm.so.1:/libn32/libXpm.so.1:/usr/lib32/libXpm.so.1.1:/lib32/libXpm.so.1.1:/usr/libn32/libXpm.so.1.1:/libn32/libXpm.so.1.1:- We try to build new open source packages using the n32 ABI.
n32 executables require n32 libraries (which reside in
/lib32
or/usr/lib32
.) This gives us faster, better supported, executables at the price of presenting a minor inconvenience to IRIX 6.2 users who need to install something additional.On old versions of IRIX (IRIX 6.2), the n32 libraries are not installed by default. Either upgrade to IRIX 6.5 (highly recommended) of install the n32 libraries.
On your IRIX 6.2 CD (1 of 2) you should look for subsystems with the
sw32
component. In this specific case, you should installViewKit_eoe.sw32.base
which includes the n32 version of thelibXpm.so
library.Note that since open source is built mostly n32, you may need to install further n32 libraries depending on what's missing and what's already installed on your particular system.
Note: missing n32 libraries are only a problem with IRIX 6.2; newer versions of IRIX have these libraries installed by default.
- Q2.3: gcc 2.8.x can't find 'as'.
- Please click on the name of the package in the download table (leftmost cell) to get to the brief release notes and follow them. In this specific case, it includes instructions on how to get the SGI assembler and linker which are not a part of gcc.
Miscellaneous
- Q3.1: Could you please add package X?
- Thanks for the request. All the open source packaging is done by volunteers so we cannot promise anything. Your request is noted and it is possible that someone would volunteer to contribute it. You may want to build it yourself and send us a pointer to your package so others may benefit as well. If you don't have the SGI development tools you may use the GNU compiler which is available in our recent distributions. If you do, please check-out the Notes on building open source packages on IRIX document.
Two particularly frequent requests are
ssh
andPGP
. Note that according to U.S. law, we are not allowed to export crypto so we simply add pointers to such software which was built and distributed by other kind people. Try following the "More Freeware" link from the top SGI/Freeware page.We sometimes get requests for stuff that comes standard on IRIX like
gzip
orrcs
. Please check your IRIX CD's, maybe what you want is already there... Specifically, RCS should be found ineoe.sw.rcs
.- Q3.2: How about packages for older IRIX versions?
- Due to limited resources, new open source packages are built on IRIX 6.2 (which has been out since 1995...) so it should install and run on IRIX 6.2 and up but not on older versions.
An older open source release (called Freeware 1.0) which was built on IRIX 5.3 is still available at The Developer's Toolbox site. Note that these older versions are not being actively maintained, enriched, or updated. If you run older IRIX versions on relatively new hardware (Indy, Indigo2, Challenge, Origin), we highly recommend upgrading IRIX to a latest version. IRIX 6.5 in particular is a very stable, fast, well supported, multi-platform, and feature rich version of IRIX.
- Q3.3: How can I order a freeware CD?
- Unfortunately, this CD is a goodwill freebie. They are not in our price book and we do not sell them so you cannot order them.
There are two possible ways around this:
- Order an IRIX system (the CD comes bundled inside)
- Download it via ftp from freeware.sgi.com and burn your own CDs.
- Q3.4: What is package X? How do I run/configure it?
- We try (but cannot commit) to provide a short description of the packages on our web site. Click on the name of the package to get to the brief description. Some basic questions can be avoided by clicking on the name of the package on the leftmost cell in the download table (note that this is different than the Download button or the rightmost cell).
Our volunteers normally build and package the software and give it some testing but we do not provide documentation beyond what comes standard in the package. You may want to contact the original authors and ask for better docs. See also Q1.2
- Q3.5: Is freeware Y2K compliant?
- In general: SGI can not guarantee the Y2K compliance of these packages since they are not written nor maintained by SGI. Also, we have no resources to do Y2K testing as we do for IRIX. If this issue is critical to you we recommend you devote the resources to scan the included source and report bugs to the original maintainers (not SGI).
- Q3.6: I want to contribute to SGI/freeware...
- Thanks very much for the offer. This is highly appreciated. We have a few reasons why we don't just take precompiled packages from external contributors:
- Security (obviously)
- Adherence to pretty elaborate build conventions + process (which are unlikely to exist in random builds):
- IRIX 6.2 and up runtime backward compatibility
- Using our latest compilers + patches
- n32 builds with full optimizations
- Install in standard places that don't clash with existing SW
- Taking care of dependencies and/or clashes with shared libs
- Various additional automatic checks of the packages
To help other SGI users without endorsement, we do, however, refer to external packages using links from our web site. If you could place your contributed package out on the net and send us a pointer, we'll gladly add a link to your contributed freeware from our web site "More Freeware" section.
Additions and contributions to this list gratefully accepted.
freeware@sgi.com