Vis5D Documentation
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Chapter 2. System Requirements and Installation

Table of Contents
System Requirements
Installing Vis5D

In the following sections we describe the hardware and software required to run Vis5D and detail how to install Vis5D on your system.

System Requirements

Vis5d+ should, in principle, run on any system with X windows, OpenGL libraries, and at least an 8-bit color display. 32MB of RAM is recommended, and an ANSI C compiler is required to build the program. It is known for certain to run on the following systems:

Silicon Graphics: IRIX version 4.0.1 or higher; Multiple processors are used when present; IrisGL is not supported
IBM RS/6000: Model 320H or higher; AIX version 3 or later; 3-D graphics hardware is supported through OpenGL
HP series 7000 or 9000 workstations: HP-UX A.09.01 or later; PEX optional
Sun SPARC: SunOS 5.x or later
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR SunOS 5 USERS: The X shared memory extension may not work correctly. If Vis5D prints an error message to the effect of "Shared memory error" then you'll have to append the following three lines to the end of your /etc/system file then reboot:
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax = 0x2000000 set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni = 0x1000 set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg = 0x100
Compaq Alpha: OSF/1 V1.3 or later; Kubota Denali Graphics hardware supported with KWS V1.3.3 or later and NPGL Run-time license
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR OSF USERS: you need to run 'limit stacksize 32m' before you run Vis5D
Linux: x86, PowerPC, and Alpha Linux systems have been tested. A 75MHz Pentium CPU or faster is recommended. gcc 2.95.2 on PowerPC has a bug that causes problems; be sure to get a version with the latest developer patches.

Note: Note that on systems which don't have 3-D graphics hardware or OpenGL, all 3-D rendering is done in software using Mesa (an OpenGL work-alike). 3-D graphics hardware is recommended for high-end use. If you do not have Mesa, you must download and install it as described below.

If you would like to port Vis5D to a new graphics system or workstation read the PORTING file which gives more information. If you succeed, please inform us so that we may add your work to the distribution. With the new autoconf-based installation procedure, porting to new machines should be considerably easier than before (and may often work with no modifications at all).