3. Installation

3.1. Distribution at ILL: 3.1.1. Customized options; 3.1.2. Data directories; 3.1.3. PGPLOT
3.2. Installation guide: 3.2.1. Compiling; 3.2.2. Installation; 3.2.3. Configuration

3.1. Distribution at ILL

RESTRAX is installed in the automounted directory of the TAS group at /home/tas/matroot/restrax/version and should run on all Linux machines. On the TAS group workstations, there should be a link pointing to it from the /usr/local/bin directory so that you can call it simply by typing restrax from your terminal window. Alternatively, you can provide an alias:


alias restrax /home/tas/matroot/restrax/start

Actually, there are two starting scripts:

start — provides initial menus and calls restrax_run with appropriate options. There is a hard link called restrax_select to start for backwards compatibility and for maintaining soft links to /user/local/bin/restrax made earlier on different Linux workstations.
restrax_run — sets all necessary environment settings and options so that no environment settings on the users' side are needed.

The scripts for ILL are customized to provide menu with ILL TAS instruments and $PGPLOT_DIR variable pointed to local PGPLOT installation at /home/tas/matroot/restrax/pgplot_linux (or pgplot for Alpha machines). This customized installation is made by the script with 2nd argument like:


Install /home/tas/matroot/restrax/version ILL

3.1.1. Customized options

Each TAS instrument should have a subdirectory under the installation root with corresponding configuration files, lookup tables etc. The starting script sets the search path for configurations to the selected instrument. There is the file restrax.ini in each of these directories, where you can specify the start-up options — load a configuration or parameter file, select the EXCI module or even to start a job file. As usual in RESTRAX, a restrax.ini file in the working directory (./) will have priority over the others. You can use such a local copy of restrax.ini to customize the start-up behaviour. Moreover, you can make a copy of the start script and modify it with respect to your needs. In such a way, you would have full control over command line options, initial menus etc.

3.1.2. Data directories

Configuration files (*.cfg, *.res, lookup tables, EXCI module parameters, restrax.ini file, etc.) are searched in several directories in the following order:

current directory (./)
directory selected at the start-up menu (actually passed to RESTRAX as a command line option -dir=). It can be also modified by the command CPATH.
The ./setup subdirectory of the installation root.

Data files are searched in the directory specified at the program start-up (initially set to a value in the restrax.ini file, DATAPATH=pathname statement). This path can be changed any time by the command PATH.

Compiled run-time EXCI modules are placed in the ./lib subdirectory of the installation root. Source files to the EXCI modules can be found in the subdirectory ./exci. The search order depends on the sequence in LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. For default RESTRAX installation, this variable defines following search order:

current directory (./)
./lib
<installation root>/lib
system directories like /usr/lib, /lib etc.

3.1.3. PGPLOT

RESTRAX needs the PGPLOT library. It is either linked with the shared version or with the archive library. Even in the latter case, you would need some PGPLOT files (graphics servers, fonts) to get graphical output from RESTRAX. The starting script tries to locate them in several directories, including any one specified as $PGPLOT_DIR variable or /usr/local/pgplot. To force RESTRAX to use the library from a particular directory, either set it as the $PGPLOT_DIR variable, or edit the restrax_run script and set the variable $PG.