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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


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