Site Requirements for UNIX SPIRES Installation


Preliminaries

Your site should previously have run and reported the results of the two test programs from the uspires web page, i.e. tcurses.c and target.c as instructed. See:

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~mspires/platform.html


Preparation for Actual Installation

To prepare for SPIRES installation, a Unix SPIRES site must provide the following:

  1. An account 'mspires' or 'spires' with abiltity for ssh access by Unix SPIRES systems folks (can be done via .rhosts or via ssh key-based authentication), with at least 25 megabytes of local (non-networked) disk space for the installation. (All your databases must also reside on local disks so additional disk space should be planned accordingly.)

    It is desirable that a directory 'spisys' be owned by the 'spires' or 'mspires' account for spires systems databases, etc. but this is not a requirement if it conflicts with local conventions. Local databases should NOT be kept in the same directory as the Unix SPIRES systems databases, i.e. filedef, formats, etc.

  2. A good C-compiler.

    We've dealt with both 'gcc' and 'cc', but find 'gcc' to be better.
    For full-screen support, we also need the 'curses' library and 'terminfo' database.

  3. 'gzip' and 'tar' with these options:

    • gzip -d $1.tar.z
    • tar -tf $1.tar >$1.files

    The $1 above is substituted by the actual filename when these utilities are used.

  4. The $PATH variable for the 'spires' (or 'mspires') account must provide self-access ('.'), and access to

    • 'vi'
    • 'ftp'
    • 'make' (The 'make' facility must include a complete runtime library.)

    and the other utilities ('c', 'gzip' and 'tar') listed above.

  5. A name, phone number, and e-mail of a responsible systems person who can be contacted in case of installation problems stemming from site deficiences such as missing components or lack of access.

    It can happen (and has) at even the most sophisticated sites!


Request for Installation

When all the pieces are in place and you are ready to request actual installation, email to:

with the following information:


Site Requirements for UNIX SPIRES Installation
Last updated: March 15, 2005
tcb@slac.stanford.edu