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Mini-ARC Installation Guide

Create a Main Directory for Mini-ARC

The first step in installing Mini-ARC on your system is to decide on a place in your directory structure for the programs. By following these guidelines, it will be easy to replace Mini-ARC with a full ARC installation if you decide to at some point.

These suggestions are more for aesthetic purposes than functional ones. So long as your path is set up properly, proper functioning of the software is not affected by where the main ARC directory is located. However, it is good practice to keep software packages which are used by multiple people in a more central location than someone's home directory. On unix systems, `/usr/local' is a standard place to put such packages, so that will be the default in examples in the rest of the manual.

Once you have decided where the main `arc' directory should be, make the directory (ex. mkdir /usr/local/arc) and give it appropriate permissions (ex. chmod a+rx /usr/local/arc). This will be the directory in which the subdirectory for the Mini-ARC binaries for each platform you use will be placed.

Decide on Which Package You Need

The following is a list of the platforms to which Mini-ARC has been ported as of June 1, 1996:

So long as it is possible to build a GCC cross compiler for your host platform, it is possible for us to build ARC for your needs. In general, any machine running UNIX will probably be acceptable as a host platform. Windows 95 and NT will work as a host platform soon. Macintosh, DOS, and Windows 3 are not likely to work as host platforms.

Copy a Mini-ARC Package to your Site

Mini-ARC is distributed over the Internet and can be copied using any Web browser. The programs available over the network are initially disabled, and require a license key before they will run. You should have received a license key for Mini-ARC with your vision system.

Use your web browser to go to the ARC home page at `http://www.newtonlabs.com/arc' . Links from that page will get you to the ARC download site, as well as online version of the ARC manual and other related information. Follow the link to the ARC download page.

Select the appropriate Mini-ARC package, as discussed above. Instructions on the download page will help you to get the most current version. You may also want to check this site periodically for upgrades. Your original key will work with such upgrades, and you can follow these same instructions to install upgrades as well as the initial installation.

Click on the appropriate packages, and tell the browser to copy them to your main `arc' directory (see section Create a Main Directory for Mini-ARC).

Extract the Software from the tar Archive Files

The packages available for download are compressed tar archive files. These should be extracted in the main `arc' directory (see section Create a Main Directory for Mini-ARC). They will expand to create separate directories for each host platform, so you do not need to do anything special to install software for multiple host types.

The following example shows how to install ARC (this this case, version 2.0 for the Sparc). To install ARC, you would move the files, uncompress them, untar them, and remove the archived versions. At the end of this example, you would have created and filled the directory `/usr/local/arc/sparcbin' with the Mini-ARC binaries.

mv mini-arc_sparcbin-2.0.tar.Z /usr/local/arc
cd /usr/local/arc
uncompress *.Z
tar xvpf mini-arc_sparcbin-2.0.tar
rm mini-arc_sparcbin-2.0.tar

Install the license key

Once you have installed the distribution package, you need to install the license key before the software is enabled. This procedure requires that you have write access in the binary directory (ie. `sparcbin', `linuxbin', etc), and that you use a machine of the appropriate architecture. For example, it is not possible to install the key for the Sparc version while running on a Linux machine--you would have to be on a Sparc. If you do not have write permission in the directory, you may need to contact someone who does before continuing.

License keys have two parts: a string specifying the person or company which Mini-ARC is licensed to, and a numeric sequence containing the actual key. Both parts must be entered correctly for the software to be enabled.

Go into the appropriate binary directory and type arc -config. This will put you in Mini-ARC configuration mode. There are many configuration parameters which may be set in this mode, including setting the license key information.

Press return until you are prompted with the line:

Person, Company ARC is licensed to:

Backspace to the start of the line and type the text part of the key. Note that capitalization, whitespace, and punctuation are not significant. When you have finished, press return. You will next be prompted with the line:

License key:

Again, backspace to the start of the line and type the numeric part of the key. This will be a string of numbers separated by hyphens.

Other configuration options may be safely ignored for now. Hit return at each and they will retain their default values.

Run Mini-ARC again, but this time without the -config flag. If the key was installed properly, it will say:

Single user license for: Jane Doe
License key: XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-X

Port /dev/cua0, baud 38400
    Terminal port # 9041
Term socket = <fd 4>
arc>

If the license was not installed properly, or was not a valid Mini-ARC license, it will say something like:

Missing license key.  Please contact Newton Research Labs for key, and install
keys by typing "arc -config" from arc's home directory.

Then it will exit. If this happens, check that you typed both parts of the key accurately. If the problem persists, contact arc@newtonlabs.com.

Set up your environment to use ARC

Finally, in order for Mini-ARC to work properly, you will need to add the appropriate binary directory to your path. Examples of setting the path for a Sparc installation of Mini-ARC are shown below. You should replace `/usr/local/arc/sparcbin', with the path appropriate to your architecture. Note that setting the path to include ARC will only affect the particular shell you execute it in--the path in other shells will not be affected

From csh or tcsh
set path=($path /usr/local/arc/sparcbin)
From bash
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/arc/sparcbin

You need to put this path extension command in your file which handles automatic path initialization. If you do not know the appropriate file, here are some possibilities:

For csh
`~/.cshrc'
For tcsh
`~/.cshrc' or `~/.tcshrc'
For bash
`~/.profile'

These changes to the initialization files will not take effect in pre-existing shells. If you are using `csh' or `tcsh' as your shell, you can load the changes into your current shell by using the source filename command. To change the path in all of your shells, you can kill and restart all the shells, or log out and back in again.

To check if you have set up your path, cd to any directory not containing the arc executable and find out whether it would work to invoke ARC from there:

From tcsh or csh
which arc
From bash
type arc

If it says the path you expected, you are done. Otherwise, recheck your path. This must work before Mini-ARC will work properly--invoking Mini-ARC with the executable in the current directory is not sufficient because it will spawn other processes which also need the path set properly.


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