MISCELLANEOUS TECHNICAL QUESTIONS FOR Open Inventor Open Source Release ----------------------------------------------------------------------- What platforms does it run on? ------------------------------ Release 2.1.5-11 was built and has been tested with Red Hat Linux release 9 on a variety of Intel Pentium-based systems. It is also known to run with several other Linux distributions on IA32-based hardware. What are the dependencies for this release? ------------------------------------------- The libraries and sample programs built for this release depend on the following DSO's. For your convenience their corresponding package name from the system which built the images is included below. Many of the packages are included in Red Hat Linux release 9: glibc-2.3.2-11.9: /lib/libm.so.6 /lib/libc.so.6 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /lib/libdl.so.2 /lib/libpthread.so.0 libgcc-3.2.2-5: /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 libstdc++-3.2.2-5: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 XFree86-libs-4.3.0-2: /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXp.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 openmotif-2.2.2-5: /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.3 XFree86-Mesa-libGL-4.3.0-2: /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 freetype-2.1.3-6: /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 libjpeg-6b-26: /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 The help cards accessible from the Open Inventor viewers, editors, and demos are in PDF format. To view these files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at http://www.adobe.com. Where can I get OpenGL? ----------------------- OpenGL is now available from many sources. Certain vendors (such as SGI) pre-bundle accelerated OpenGL drivers with their systems; some (NVIDIA, et. al.) have accelerated drivers available on their web sites; and other vendors (3dfx, Matrox, ATI, etc.) use drivers created by the DRI Project or the Utah-GLX Project. Which implementation of OpenGL to choose is ultimately dependent upon the type of graphics card you have. Open Inventor 2.1.5 is compatible with any implementation of OpenGL that conforms to the OpenGL ABI for Linux, such as: SGI 230, 330, and 550 workstations with VPro graphics are shipped with specially-tuned OpenGL DSO's. NVIDIA-specific drivers compliant with the OpenGL ABI for Linux can be found on the NVIDIA web site. DRI Architecture Drivers. The DRI architecture uses Mesa and provides hardware acceleration for a number of popular chipsets. The DRI implementation is included in XFree86 4.0. OpenGL Sample Implementation is the driver framework used by almost all commercial 3D hardware vendors to develop OpenGL drivers for their systems. Source code is available from the SGI Open Source web site. Mesa is a 3D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL. Mesa 3.2 includes OpenGL ABI for Linux compliant DSO's. See 'Where can I get Mesa?' below. More links to various vendors' OpenGL implementations are available from these sites (subject to change): http://www.mesa3d.org http://www.linux3d.org http://linux3d.netpedia.net If you are unable to find accelerated OpenGL drivers for your card, or have problems using the vendor-provided accelerated drivers, we recommend using Mesa 3.2 or the OpenGL sample implementation. Where can I get Mesa? --------------------- Mesa is a 3D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL. For general information about Mesa please refer to the Mesa web site, http://www.mesa3d.org. Special Note: Official Mesa releases prior to version 3.2 were not compliant with the OpenGL ABI for Linux. If you are using Mesa you must upgrade to Mesa 3.2, or you may encounter dependency problems when installing via rpm. Where can I get Motif or OpenMotif? ----------------------------------- Systems running the IRIX operating system typically have Motif 1.2 and 2.1 installed as part of the motif_eoe product. For general information about OpenMotif, please refer to its web site at http://www.openmotif.org. Links to pre-compiled binaries can be found there and at http://www.rpmfind.net. How do I install this release? ------------------------------ 1. Check to see that you have the software listed above as dependencies already installed on your system. 2. Download all three Open Inventor rpm files from the FTP site to a temporary location on your system, e.g. /usr/tmp. 3. Log in as root, change directory to the temporary location, then enter: rpm -Uvh sgi-OpenInventor*.rpm What do these rpms install? --------------------------- sgi-OpenInventor-clients installs the execution-only environment, which contains the Open Inventor run-time libraries under /usr/lib: libInventor.so and libInventorXt.so. sgi-OpenInventor-data installs a number of example model files under /usr/share/data/models. sgi-OpenInventor-devel installs the full Open Inventor development environment. It includes header files in /usr/include/Inventor and manual pages in /usr/man/man3. What should I do to run it? --------------------------- Open Inventor is an Application Programming Interface that you would typically utilize in your own program. There are also some sample programs in the distribution. After installing the software, open a shell window and enter the following: ivview /usr/share/data/models/SgiLogo.iv or ivview /usr/share/data/models/buildings/windmill.iv Last updated: $Date: 2005/01/14 22:58:15 $