Platform Support

Installing 32-bit CIAO on 64-bit Machines | Explanation of Platform Support

CIAO 4.4 is available for the following platforms:

Linux 32 bit and 64 bit

The Linux builds are done on a CentOS 5.3 machine and have been tested on CentOS and Fedora Core 11.

CIAO 4.4 does not run on:

RHEL version 4 or lower
SuSE 9

Mac OS X Intel 32 bit and 64 bit

The Mac OS X Intel release is built on version 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and is compatible with version 10.7 (Lion). The software is tested on both versions of the operating system.

CIAO 4.4 does not run on:

Mac OS X 10.5 or lower

(18 Sep 2012) OSX 10.8, Moutain Lion

CIAO 4.4.1 is still being tested against the lastest OSX release. We believe that the tools work correctly in OSX10.8; however, there are problems with Sherpa and the GUIs as noted below. Users wanting to use sherpa for fitting X-ray spectra should not upgrade to Moutain Lion.

[Updated] (2 Oct 2012) We have identified a problem using XSpec models in sherpa and the modelflux tool. Unfortunately we cannot provide a work around at this time. Users who try to use any XSpec model will get the following error message:

ImportError: XSPEC initialization failed; check HEADAS environment variable

There is a system library incompatibility with Mountain Lion. Users must follow the suggested work around to use the GUI applications.

Some users have also reported an issue using the ciao-install script that will print lines similar to this

./ciao-install: line 268: let: ispace=/dev/disk0s2: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "/dev/disk0s2")
./ciao-install: line 270: ((: < 1 : syntax error: operand expected (error token is "< 1 ")

These are caused by a difference in the df system utility used to check for available disk space. If you are certain you have sufficient space you can safely ignore this.

Installing 32-bit CIAO on 64-bit Machines

The 64-bit installations of CIAO are recommended for Linux and Mac OS X Intel platforms with that architecture.

It is possible to install the 32-bit CIAO on these platforms as well, but the basic 32-bit libraries must be installed. The 32-bit libraries are not packaged with CIAO; the user is responsible for installing them via the package manager (e.g. yum, fink).

The names may differ slightly but here are the known packages:

X11
GL libs (Open GL or Mesa)
curses
libm
C libraries
C++ libraries
libz
pthread
crypt

Doing an ldd on our executables and libraries yields the following list of system libraries:. They should live in either /lib or /usr/lib:

libncurses.so.5	libXt.so.6 	 libgnutls.so.13
libm.so.6	libSM.so.6 	 libkrb5support.so.0 
libdl.so.2	libICE.so.6 	 libkeyutils.so.1
libstdc++.so.6	libXrandr.so.2	 libresolv.so.2
libgcc_s.so.1	libXrender.so.1	 libgcrypt.so.11
libc.so.6	libXinerama.so.1 libgpg-error.so.0
ld-linux.so.2	libXau.so.6	 libnsl.so.1
libX11.so.6	libXdmcp.so.6	 libsepol.so.1
libGLU.so.1 	libdl.so.2	 libz.so.1
libGL.so.1	libselinux.so.1	 librt.so.1
libXmu.so.6	libcrypt.so.1	 libpthread.so.0

Explanation of Platform Support

The CXC's commitment to support a platform - i.e. a version of an operating system - means that we undertake to fix bugs on that system. This requires that we are able to compile CIAO from source on each platform, which is a much greater commitment than simply providing a compatible binary. Additionally, it is typically necessary to support three versions of each operating system: former, current and new.

When we support a system:

We test every tool on every platform via a large number of regression tests and scripts; this requires a greater amount of time when the number of systems increases.
We have to have current machines running each of these systems.
We make a tarball and install it on each system; this process is never problem-free, and takes manpower and time.

As a result, we are not able to support a larger number of systems than we currently do. We gather information from users on what platforms they are running (or want to use) in order to prevent the overextension of our resources.