System requirements
TRAX
is designed to run on computers with some variant of the UNIX
operating system family. Mainly supported are currently:
- IBM RS/6000 or pSeries (AIX)
- x86 (Linux)
More platforms may actually be supported, consult the download section.
The executable currently needs less than 2 MByte of RAM, the total amount of
memory depends on the problem size, of course.
For example,
approximately
10 MB of cross section data would typically be needed for each material present in the simulation.
A minimum installation, including all base data, currently needs about 20 MB free disk space.
Computation times depend to a large extent on the simulation scenario.
As a rule of thumb, the complete slowing down of electrons takes about 3 milliseconds
per keV initial energy, the stopping of a heavy particle like a proton or carbon ion
about 3 seconds per MeV of total energy. These
numbers are estimated for a (now obsolete) PowerPC 604e @ 375 MHz equivalent.
Your mileage may vary.
The standard executable supports 32-bit address space.
For eligible platforms, a 64-bit executable, trax-64
,
is supported as well from version 1102 onwards.
For older versions, the traxlarge
and traxvlarge
executables provide 2GB and 3.25GB heap space, respectively (AIX only).
Prerequisites
Minimum prerequisites to install and run are:
- a computer with one of the above mentioned operating systems
- enough RAM (s.a.)
- enough disk space (s.a.)
- an HTML browser (to read the docs)
- unpacking/unarchiving utilities:
uncompress/zcat/tar
or
gunzip/tar
or
unzip
.
Installation
For usage within the GSI biophysics groups the installation is already done
and everything should work out-of-the-box.
For use outside GSI export packages are available
here,
or, maybe, in some distant future,
on GSI's ftp server
(once they manage to set up one, but don't hold your breath).
It comprises the executable, shell scripts,
tutorial data and documentation in HTML (and possibly system specific format).
It is recommended to keep all TRAX
-related files in
a single directory. Assume this installation directory is TRAX
.
Then:
-
cd TRAX
-
Download the export package pertaining to the desired platform.
-
unpack it, e.g. one of the following:
zcat TRAX-1102.MacOSX-powerpc-1039.tar.Z | tar -xvf -
gunzip -c TRAX-1102.MacOSX-powerpc-1039.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
unzip TRAX-1102.MacOSX-powerpc-1039.zip
(you may also use separate calls of uncompress
and
tar
)
-
Define the shell variable
$TRAX
to point to the TRAX
directory:
export TRAX=`pwd`
This is the quick and dirty way. For a permanent definition you must
define the $TRAX
shell variable in your login script (e.g. .profile
if you use the ksh
), or some other central location.
-
Also, upgrade your command path:
export PATH=$TRAX/bin:$PATH
This should be sufficient. Then, on the shell level, enter:
trax
and the command prompt should appear.
Last updated: M.Kraemer,
$Id: traxinst.html,v 1.11 2016/03/02 14:34:14 kraemer Exp $
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