DESCRIPTION

These notes describe how to download and install spec.

PREPARATION

To helps keep the files associated with spec organized, CSS recommends creating a user account on your machine named specadm that will own the spec files. We also recommend that the distribution files associated with each version of spec be placed in a subdirectory named after the release number in the home directory of specadm. For example, if installing spec release 5.09.02-2 and if the home directory of specadm is /home/specadm, then the spec distribution might be placed in a directory named /home/specadm/spec5.09.02. The downloaded distribution "tarball" files might be stored in a separate directory, such as /home/specadm/dist/.

DOWNLOADING

spec is distributed as a tar format file, usually retrieved from the certif.com server using http. One generally receives emailed instructions on the exact path name to access a particular spec distribution from the http server. Distributions can only be retrieved by name, as the contents of the distribution directory are hidden.

Assuming the recommended locations, the usual procedure for downloading the spec distribution is as follows:

cd /home/specadm/dist

wget http://certif.com/css_dist/spec_distver.tar

The distver part of the file name will be unique to each download and will include the release version number. If you don't have the wget utility, you can try to save the file from a web browser.

EXTRACTING

Use commands along the following lines to extract the spec distribution from the tar file:

cd /home/specadm
mkdir spec5.09.02             (for release 5.09.02)
cd spec5.09.02
tar xvf ../dist/spec_distver.tar

INSTALLING

When updating a previous installation of spec, copy the install_data file from the previous distribution directory to the current distribution directory. That will save having to retype the same responses to the configuration questions.

On a PC, with a hardware configuration that uses ISA or PCI cards, the Install program needs to be run as the super user (root). In other cases, it isn't necessary to run as root, but the user running the script needs to have permission to write files in the target directories.

Some of the following Install options may be of interest.

-d	Use the default parameters from install_data
-p	Do a partial installation (geometry-dependent stuff)
-s	Just compile the geometry target
-S	Do not require root access to install

To run the script, type Install [options] (or ./Install [options] if the current directory isn't in your path).

The config_adm help file explains how to setup up the site configuration. In particular, sections at the end of the help file describe how to set up special linked configurations and extra protection features.

You should also check the README files in the spec distribution directory and the aux subdirectory for additional information.