Installing Mathematica 7 on Linux
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg94076] Installing Mathematica 7 on Linux
- From: Jon Harrop <jon at ffconsultancy.com>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 07:15:11 -0500 (EST)
I've had quite a bit of trouble installing the Mathematica 7 trial on my Linux box and believe I have discovered why so I'll share the problem and solution. I am running a stock 64-bit kernel Debian EtchNHalf with a 32-bit userland on a Dell PowerEdge T605. This confuses Mathematica's installer, which fails to install directly into the 32-bit userland because (I believe) it mistakes it for a 64-bit userland having asked the kernel. The installer gives the error: "Error: The installer was unable to check for a valid password file. Your Mathematica installation may be incomplete or corrupted. Installation failed. See /usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/7.0/InstallErrors." But that file contains a completely different error: "/usr/local/Wolfram/Mathematica/7.0/SystemFiles/Kernel/Binaries/Linux-x86-64/MathKernel: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" Also, it fails to install into a 64-bit chroot giving the error: "xdg-desktop-menu: No writable system menu directory found". The solution is to run every command through the "linux32" script to convince the installer and Mathematica itself that everything is 32-bit. I have done this with the installer and it completed ok. I have done this with the "mathematica" script itself and it appears to run ok although I am waiting for my licence's password before I can actually get it up and running. HTH. -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u