Software

Software

All licensed Departmental Software is installed in /afs/lions.odu.edu/@sys/dep/ where dept is the name of the departmental directory (e.g. /afs/lions.odu.edu/@sys/dep/ece). Each directory is accessable only by users in that department. For example, members of the Aerospace department have access to software installed in the ECE directory.

The UNIX Support Group has written start-up scripts for departmental software. These scripts are located in /usr/pubsw/bin. However, because /usr/pubsw/bin is in your PATH, just type the name of the script to activate the software without typing in the whole path. Each start-up script is defined as [dept]-[software] (ex. cae-proe, ece-matlab). Access to the scripts are restricted by department (i.e. all scripts labeled aero can only be used by the Aerospace Engineering department).

Using Another Department's Software

If you would like to use software licensed to another department, you need to contact the department. If they approve they will send an e-mail to unixhelp@odu.edu asking us to allow you access to their software. However, most departments will reserve the right to revoke your usage privileges if you are taking away resources from their students.

Free Software

There are a large number of free GPL (GNU Public License) software packages installed in LIONS such as Octave, XGrace, Lyx, Ghostview, GNUPlot, ps2pdf, Lynx, Xview, WindowMaker, and others that are available to all LIONS users. These packages are located in /usr/pubsw/bin, which is in your default PATH.

If you would like us to install a free software package for you or your department, please send email to unixhelp@odu.edu or fill in the WREQ form (click the WREQ tab) and let us know where to find it. We will do our best to compile and install the software for you. However, we don't write the software and at best we can only offer minimal support for free or GPL software.

To see what free software is available, issue

pkg_info | more

at any LIONS workstation. (The vertical bar and the 'more' command allows you to page the output, since it is quite long.) Unfortunately, the list is unsorted, so to create a sorted list, issue

pkg_info | sort | more

Licensed Software

The UNIX Support Group offers network level support for licensed software. Our main level of support deals with ensuring that the software is installed properly and can be accessed by the authorized users. If problems arise we will work with the department and often times we will contact the Technical Support department of a software vendor and work with them to resolve any issues. Some problems are more difficult than others and cannot be solved in a few minutes. When the problem is solved we will contact all appropriate parties to inform them of the fix.