Installation of SALOME 5.1.1 on Ubuntu 9.04

NEW - A post "Installation of SALOME 5.1.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 (64 bit)" was recently published and recommended if you have already updated to Ubuntu 10.04.

SALOME platform is recently updated to version 5.1.1. This latest version ported the GUI onto the QT 4. For the old version 4.*, in which QT 3 is used, I suggest reading "Polishing GUI of older SALOME versions".

This poster introduces the installation procedure of SALOME 5.1.1. It is not difficult since the whole process is performed with help of a graphical interface and I already extracted the potential problems you might encounter in this article. All of the following instructions are tested on Ubuntu 9.04, and they are also compatible with the latest SALOME 5.1.3. For Ubuntu 9.10, you have to read "Installation of SALOME 5.1.2 on (K)Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit" for additional issues.

Okay, before start installing, we'd better fix two problems in advance.

1. Execute the following two commands

:/$ sudo rm /bin/sh
:/$ sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

They replace "sh" with "bash", otherwise, there will be errors during the installation of SALOME, as shown in the following pictures.





2. An old version of the gfortran library libgfortran is necessary to enable the mesh module in SALOME. Execute the following commands to create a symbolic link so as to let a libgfortran.so.1 present. After the link is created, update the search path index.

:/$ sudo apt-get install gfortran
:/$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libgfortran.so.3 /usr/lib/libgfortran.so.1
:/$ sudo ldconfig
:/$ sudo updatedb

(ldconfig is used to update /etc/ld.so.cache based on /etc/ld.so.conf, where the non-standard paths are added; updatedb is used to update the index database.)

An error like this will be encountered after the installation if there is no libgfortran existing. Matter of fact, it is also feasible to execute the above commands after the installation of SALOME.



Now you can launch the install script "runInstall" inside the directory InstallWizard_5.1.1_Debian_4.0/, which is obtained by extracting the suitable tar.gz package downloaded from the SALOME website. For Ubuntu 9.04, you can use Debian Etch version.

Run from the terminal:

:/$ ./runInstall

Wait and see the GUI installation wizard, shown as



Following the wizard it is easy to install SALOME. It will take a while to finish the installation. You may see an warning like this after the finished installation. You just leave it. It doesn't matter.



Now you will have two directories "salome_5.1.1" and "salome_appli_5.1.1" at the installation location. Ship into salome_appli_5.1.1 and by running the script "runAppli" you could launch the SALOME software.

:/$ ./runAppli

If encounter an error probably saying that the file .omniORB_%your username%_%your host name%_2810.cfg couldn't be found, you can manually create a sub-directory "USERS" under salome_appli_5.1.1 and try again.

:/$ mkdir salome_appli_5.1.1/USERS

So far the SALOME should be ready to use.