MIDAS software download and installation

Installation of the MIDAS base distribution for Solaris for Intel

The latest MIDAS release was issued on July 6 2009

As from July 6 2009 release MIDAS uses TclTk version 8.5.7

The base distribution files have a name of the form MIDAS_base_xxxxxx.tar.gz where xxxxxx is the date of the distribution in the form ddmmyy.
The current distribution id is 300909.
The files in the base distribution are all platform independant. If you are installing multiple versions of the software for different hardware or software platforms you only require to download the base distribution files once.

If the file ends .gz then it has been compressed with the gzip utility. You can download a copy of the gunzip utility (in plain binary) in case you do not already have it.

NOTE - If you already are running the MIDAS package then it is STRONGLY recommended that you DO NOT install a new release over your existing installation. The installation procedure has been designed to encourage a parallel installation. Only when you are happy with the new release should you delete your old release. You should switch to running from the new installation and DELETE all the old installation. DO NOT just copy the new release into the old directory structure. In this way you will remove all obsolete files. In some cases the presence of obsolete versions of files in the directories may cause incorrect functioning of the software.

Download the base distribution file with ID 300909  5.5 Mbytes

Having fetched this file you should uncompress using gunzip and then run tar to unpack. A directory MIDAS_base_xxxxxx will be created in your current directory.

Make the directory MIDAS_base_xxxxxx your current directory.

The next step is to download the program distribution specific to Solaris for Sparc. If you are installing the software on a central server you can install as many program distributions as you wish. The directory and file names which will be created are all unique.

Download the program distribution file with ID 300909  1.7 Mbytes

Uncompress the file MIDAS_bin_SunOSx86_xxxxxx.tar.gz using gunzip and run tar to unpack.
You will create the directories bin_SunOSx86 and lib_SunOSx86 within the current directory.

The software is now fairly insensitive as to where it is installed and as far as possible it is not essential that any system environment variables are modified. This enables installation by persons who many not have superuser access to their machine.

However for UNIX installations it is still recommended that you reference the package as /MIDAS and that the bin_SunOSx86 directory is in your binary search path. You can either create a symbolic link or automount point /MIDAS which points to the MIDAS_base_xxxxxx directory. Both of these require that you have superuser access. Then add /MIDAS/bin_SunOSx86 to the PATH variable in the file /etc/.login. For users of CDE this has to be enabled via your $HOME/.dtprofile file.

If you cannot do this (or prefer not to) then you should as a minimum set the environment variable MIDASBASE to the path of the MIDAS_base_xxxxxx directory. The default value assigned by the software to the environment variable MIDASBASE if it does not already exist is /MIDAS.
$MIDASBASE will be used in the instructions following to refer to the base of the software installation.

The MIDAS package requires that the directory $MIDASBASE/experiments is writeable. If you have installed the MIDAS package in a read only disc partition then $MIDASBASE/experiments could be a link to a directory in a writeable partition. All users of the MIDAS package will require write access to the directory and its contents. The directory name $MIDASBASE/experiments may be replaced by the environment variable MIDASEXPBASE. If only the MIDAS base package is being used or sharing of experimental information between users is not required then MIDASEXPBASE could have the value ~/experiments - i.e. be local to the user.

If you are updating from a previous version of this software you can copy the directories $MIDASBASE/apparatus and $MIDASBASE/experiments from your existing release. If this is a new installation then $MIDASBASE/Samples contains simple versions to get you started. Copy the directories apparatus, experiments, log and sas (the last 2 are empty) to get you going.

If you are updating from a previous version of this software delete the file ~/.eg-defaults.tcl. (Or rename if you wish to preserve).

Now execute the command MIDAS-session (if you added $MIDASBASE/bin_SunOSx86 to your binary search path) or execute the command $MIDASBASE/bin_SunOSx86/MIDAS-session (if you did not).

Two optional components are available which previously were included in the base package.

Sample configuration and Spectra files are available to get you started.

Download the Samples file with ID 070504  3.5 Mbytes

Ensure that the directory MIDAS_base_xxxxxx is your current directory and then uncompress using gunzip and run tar to unpack. You will create a directory Samples within the current directory. The Samples directory includes a directory $MIDASBASE/Samples/spectra which contains some sample 1d and 2d histograms. In the Base Frame select the button "Spectrum Viewer". When the window (Spectrum Directory Browser) starts your home directory is scanned for directories (and spectra). If you wish to view the sample histograms type $MIDASBASE/Samples/spectra (actually you must yourself substitute $MIDASBASE by the appropiate path) into the Directory entry window and press return. The directory browser will show you that there are 3 directories available. Double click on 1 of these. Now double-click on any one of the files shown in the list with an "s" at the extreme left hand edge of the list (these are all valid spectra files) and you will get a new window containing the spectrum display.

You can now browse the supplied spectra and any others you may have.

Full documentation in html format is available for TclTk.

Download the manual file with ID 300909  2.8 Mbytes

Ensure that the directory MIDAS_base_xxxxxx is your current directory and then uncompress using gunzip and run tar to unpack. You will create a directory manual within the current directory.

If you only wish to view and analyse spectra then you can finish now. If you intend to use other MIDAS application packages then some further installation is needed. It is not essential to install the MIDAS Spectrum Server unless you intend to install one of the application packages.

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