TRAX Installation
| GSI Biophysics | TRAX long write-up |

TRAX Installation

System reqirements

TRAX is designed to run on computers with some variant of the UNIX operating system family. Currently supported are: Other flavours of UNIX might be supported on request.
The executable needs as little as 1 MByte main memory, 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.

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. (numbers valid for a PowerPC 604e @ 375 MHz equivalent)
A reasonable choice of machine would be: IBM RS/6000 Model 43P, 166 MHz or better, 128MB+ memory, AIX 4.3.2 or higher.

Prerequisites

Minimum prerequisites to install and run are:

Installation

For usage within the GSI biophysics groups the installation is already done.
For use outside GSI an export package is available on GSI's ftp server.
It is recommended to keep all TRAX-related files in a single directory. Assume this installation directory is TRAX. Then:
  1. cd TRAX
  2. Download the tar'ed and compressed file 'TRAX.<os>.tar.Z' or 'TRAX.<os>.tar.gzip' where <os> stands for the operating system, e.g. AIX or Linux.
  3. unpack it, e.g.:
    zcat TRAX.AIX.tar.Z | tar -xvf -
    
    (you might also use separate calls of uncompress and tar)
  4. Define the shell variable $TRAX to point to the TRAX directory:
    export TRAX=`pwd`
    
    This is the quick and dirty way. To be permanent you must define the shell variable in your login script (e.g. .profile if you use the ksh)
  5. 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.
| GSI Biophysics | TRAX long write-up |
Last updated: M.Kraemer@gsi.de, 22-Nov-2002