How to install the Unix Amaya Binary Release

In the following, we assume that the path stored in the archive begins with the Amaya directory (this change was introduced for the source distribution). Older binary distributions use Amaya as the top directory name instead.

Choose a place for Amaya

Supposing the binary distribution was loaded fine, one must choose a place to install it. We suggest

• /usr/local for a system wide installation
• the user home directory for a personal installation

A Linux version doesn't need more that 5 Megabytes of disk space, even a RISC architecture distribution should not exceed 10 Megabytes.

Extract the distribution

Move the distribution to this directory, check that the rights on this directory allow you to create a directory and extract the distribution.

On a Linux ELF platform one must invoke:

tar xvzf amaya-linux-elf-Release.tar.gz

Where Release has to be replaced by the current version number.

More generally if the distribution is a tar.gz file:

gunzip -c amaya-Platform-Release.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Whatever the method used, this should print around 40 lines of output and create a new directory called Thot populated with a few files and directories. If not, your distribution file was probably corrupted during transfer, please get a new one. Read carefully the COPYRIGHT, README and AboutThot files.

Set up the environment and start Amaya

The file Amaya/SYSTEM/bin/amaya is the Amaya binary, the best thing is to add the path to the Amaya/SYSTEM/bin directory to your PATH environment variable. For example on a Linux-ELF system:

setenv PATH $PATH:/usr/local/Amaya/LINUX-ELF/bin

for a csh or tcsh shell. When using sh, bash or another variant of the Bourne shell

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Amaya/LINUX-ELF/bin ; export PATH

Maybe this command should be added to the .login startup script. Once done one can lauch Amaya simply by typing "amaya" to the shell prompt. The Amaya main window should open and display the first page of the Amaya documentation.

If something goes wrong

• If Amaya doesn't seems to work, check the following points:
  1. the DISPLAY variable is correctly set.
  2. eventually remove your previous registry file $HOME/.thotrc.
  3. The binary just installed is the correct one, i.e. it is the correct binaries for the current machine (don't try to start the Linux-ELF version on a Solaris machine or an old Linux a.out installation).
  4. If the binary version is ok, check the availability of the dynamic libraries needed by the executable file amayamain (located under Amaya/bin/SYSTEM/amaya). for example on a Linux-ELF system type

     ldd Amaya/LINUX-ELF/bin/amaya

     and check that there is no missing libraries.

• One can install packages for different platform under the same directory (for example on a server filesystem exported via NFS to an heterogenous set of machines), use the appropriate PATH on each platform.
• All the traffic on the Amaya mailing-list is archived. Please have a look at it before sending us mail if something goes wrong. Remember, it's an Alpha release.