Using IDL in the Optics group

• Local IDL hints
• Using the floating IDL licenses
• Macintosh
• PCs
• Unix client configuration
• Unix server configuration
• Obtaining a standalone IDL licence

Links to useful IDL sites

• Local IDL hints
• PC licensing with license server on pc
• IDL Astronomy libraries/links
• Using TeX (Greek letters) in IDL plots
• Head honchos
• Very extensive
• emacs and IDL

Local IDL hints

Using the floating IDL licenses

Macintosh

Macintosh computers can't draw on the floating license pool and must instead use a hardware key - see the section below on obtaining a standalone license.

PCs

Floating licenses can be accessed by PCs within our workgroup (and via dialin to the University) provided the client has access to the same license file as is used on the optics license server, which tells the client to contact optics in order to obtain an IDL license.

• Install IDL on your computer from CD in the usual way.
• The IDL install will create a directory called ...\rsi\license, the location of which will depend on the location into which you chose to install IDL (for me it's located in c:\Program Files\rsi\license). Locate this directory.
• Save a copy of the license.dat file into this directory by right-clicking on the following link and selecting 'Save link as..'

license.dat file (2k)
• Alternatively, start IDL, click on the 'licence' button, select 'floating license', and cut-and-paste the text of the license.dat file into the small text window (Left-click on the link below to view the license file for cut-and-paste)

license.dat file (2k)

Unix client configuration

Floating licenses can be accessed by our UNIX machines provided the client has access to the same license file as is used on the optics license server, which tells the client to contact optics in order to obtain an IDL license.  This can be done in one of two ways:

• Via an NFS mount. This is easy if the two machines already share the /usr/local partition in which IDL is installed.  Simply make sure both /usr/local/rsi/idl/... and /usr/local/rsi/license are available on the client machine. This is generally the case within the optics cluster.
• If the two machines are not cross-mounted, copy the license.dat file into the license directory of your local IDL installation.  For example, in our install (which follows the defaults suggested by RSI) we would place the license.dat file into the /usr/local/rsi/license/ directory and make it readable to everyone (chmod go+r license.dat).
• Right-click on this link to save the file directly, left-click to view the file for cut and paste.

license.dat file (2k)

Unix server configuration

NOTE: This information is only relevant to the optics license server.

• Obtain a copy of the current license data file and save it in the default directory /usr/local/rsi/license

(Right-click on this link to save the file directly, left-click to view the file for cut and paste.)
license.dat file (2k)
• Note that if you have set up IDL to work from a directory other than the default install you may have to save this file in a different location and modify some of the scripts.  Refer to the IDL license management documentation.
• Note also that there is a bug in the distrinuted lmgrd program binaries when run on DecUNIX 4.0 which require application of a patch to work.  Symptom is that the system returns an error when spawning the program idl_lmgrd.

Download the patch (981k)
• Add a line to your machine's startup file (/etc/rc.local on DEC UNIX) which will run the IDL license manager at boot time. For security reasons both RSI and Globetrotter Software (from whom RSI license the license manager) recommend that the licence manager is not run as root, so I have added the following line to the /etc/rc.local file on optics:

su scholten -c "export IDL_DIR=/usr/local/rsi/idl; umask 022; /usr/local/rsi/idl/bin/lmgrd >> /usr/local/rsi/license/lmgrd_optics.log"
• Use the same command as above to start the license daemon by hand.

Obtaining a standalone IDL licence

Obtaining a stand-alone IDL licence for the PC

• Download a copy of the lmutil program

lmutil program for PCs (280k)
• From the DOS command prompt, locate the lmutil program and execute it by typing:
lmutil lmhostid
• You should see something like
C:\temp> lmutil lmhostid
lmutil - Copyright (C) 1989-1998 Globetrotter Software Inc.
The FlexLM Host ID of this machine is "00c04f888d74"
(Note that the Host ID is the hardware address of the network card, which is not the same as the TCP/IP address of your computer).
• Copy the host ID (or the whole message) and E-mail it along with the name of your computer and your operating system type (Win95/Win98/WinNT4.0sp?) to your local optics group licence manager Robert Scholten:
Your name:
Machine name:
Operating System:
HostID:
• This information will be added to the IDL_LicenceForm.xls Excel spreadsheet and forwarded to Research Systems Inc. update@rsinc.com. They will respond within a day or two with a licence key for your machine.
• Alternatively you can pay $200US for a dongle which plugs into the parallel port of your PC.

Obtaining a standalone IDL licence for Macintosh computers