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Installing ENVI Services Engine on Linux tips
THIS INFORMATION ONLY PERTAINS TO SOFTWARE VERSIONS IDL 8.5, ENVI 5.3 AND PRIOR
Topic:
When installing the ENVI Services Engine on Linux, you may encounter some issues. This article provides some tips on how you can handle some of these issues..
Discussion:
Some common issues that you might encounter when installing the ENVI Services Engine (ESE) are listed below:
- Missing system libraries
- No X server (ESE 1.0.1)
- Problems with licensing
Missing system libraries
Linux distributions do not always come with all of the system libraries that are needed for IDL and the ESE. Usually this issue will manifest when you try to launch IDL. The error message might say something like the following:
| /usr/local/exelis/idl82/bin/bin.linux.x86_64/idl: error while loading shared libraries: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory |
Usually the error message provides a pretty clear indication of the library or package that needs to be installed. The additional dependencies that need to be installed on Ubuntu and CentOS are discussed below. You may consider trying to install these dependencies before performing the installation.
Ubuntu (Debian based distribution):
On Ubuntu systems you might need to install the following packages to get ESE or IDL to launch successfully.
- libxp6
- libxp-dev
- libxmu-dev
- libxmu6
- xlibxpm-dev
You can use the command "apt-get install" to get these packages. For example:
sudo apt-get install libxp6
CentOS (Redhat based distribution):
Typically on CentOS systems, you should only need to install libXp. You can use the "yum install" command to do this. For example:
yum install libXp
No X server (ESE 1.0.1)
NOTE: This issue should be fixed for ESE 5.1. If you are using ESE 5.1, you can ignore this section.
Some IDL and ENVI features require X resources to run properly. These features include widgets, displayed graphics, IDL_IDLBridges (fixed in ESE 5.1), and some ENVI routines (fixed in ESE 5.1). If you try run these routines that require an X server on a system without one, an error that says, "... Unable to connect to X Windows display: :0.0" will occur.
If you are encountering the "X Windows display" error, you may want to consider the following suggestions:
- If the error is occurring because your code is calling a widget or trying to display a graphic, then you should consider rewriting the code in such way that these graphics are not displayed. If the error is occurring because you are trying to display a Direct Graphics or (new) IDL 8 Graphics window, you may consider using the Z-Buffer device (DG) or the BUFFER keyword (NG)
- In ESE 1.0.1, the timer used by the IDL_IDLBRIDGE and some ENVI routines required an X resources. Therefore, if you need to use routines that cause this error, you can workaround the problem using X Virtual Frame Buffer (Xvfb). The following article has some additional information about Xvfb:
http://harrisgeospatial.com/Support/SelfHelpTools/HelpArticles/HelpArticles-Detail/TabId/2718/ArtMID/10220/ArticleID/19546/2382.aspx
Licensing Issues
If the ENVI Services Engine is not able to find a license, the following error will occur:
The ENVI Services Engine requires a license: shutting down.
The ENVI Services Engine requires a valid license. Shutting down
A few of possible causes for this error message are discussed below:
License not it the correct location
One possible cause of the error is that the "license.dat" for your system is in the wrong location. According to the "Licensing ESE" page in the Help:
Copy your valid ESE license.dat file to the folder on your machine that contains the installation files for IDL and/or ENVI, usually this is located /usr/local/exelis/license for the root user or /home/<user>/exelis/license for non-root users.
In a clustered environment, copy the license.dat file to the shared installation directory on the network. The default is /usr/local/exelis/license on the install machine.
License not valid
Another possible cause of the error is that the license might not be valid. For example, the license might be expired or the increment needed to run ESE may not have been included. If this is the case, please contact Tech Support (support@exelisvis.com).
Written by DS. Reviewed by FS 12/16/2013