OPUS Version 5.4b September 2004 README.TXT Contents: --------- + Introduction + Mini-FAQ + 3rd Party S/W Information + Using the OPUS Application Programming Interface + Known Issues Introduction: ------------- This release contains the complete OPUS system v5.4b for the Solaris, Linux, and AIX platforms. This includes the OPUS Application Programming Interface (OAPI), the Java managers (OMG and PMG), and the OPUS CORBA servers. Refer to the OPUS FAQ for information on installing and using OPUS. Mini-FAQ: --------- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Where do I find the OPUS FAQ? The "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) is located on the CD-ROM. If you have mounted the CD-ROM as /cdrom, then look in: /cdrom/html/opusfaq.html The FAQ also can be found on the web. Open: http://www.ess.stsci.edu/products/opus/faq/opusfaq.html ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Where do I find out what's new in this release ? The FAQ contains a section describing the new features in this release. In addition, it outlines important changes for users of earlier releases of the OPUS platform. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ How do I install the OPUS distribution? See the OPUS FAQ for information regarding installing OPUS and the Java managers for the first time and for upgrading earlier versions of OPUS. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 3rd Party S/W Information: -------------------------- OPUS relies on several 3rd party software packages including GNU GCC, and the ACE/TAO Real-time CORBA ORB. OPUS is built on Solaris and AIX using GCC 3.2, and on Linux using GCC 3.3. More information on the compiler can be found at: http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html. ACE/TAO is a freely available, open-source, and standards-compliant real-time implementation of CORBA. OPUS v5.4b is built against ACE 5.3.1. More information on this software can be found at http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html. The OPUS Managers do not require but do support the use of SFTP via the J2SSH Secure Shell utilities (0.2.7). Find information on using J2SSH here: http://ess.stsci.edu/products/opus/faq/opusfaq_install.html#SFTP Using the OPUS Applications Programming Interface (OAPI): --------------------------------------------------------- Refer to the OPUS FAQ and the PDF document oapi-how-to.pdf in the html directory of the OPUS distribution for an introduction to the OAPI. Known Issues: ------------- For this version of OPUS, be aware of the following items/issues: + The Tru64 operating system is no longer supported. + All earlier versions of the Windows OPUS Managers need to be uninstalled (from the PC) prior to installing the new versions. This is the result of an IDL and directory name change. During the uninstallation of 4.2 and older Managers however, the default version of Java on the PC must be Java 1.3. 4.2 and older versions of the OPUS uninstaller package created by InstallAnywhere require Java 1.3 behind the scenes. The current version of the OPUS Managers and the installer package do work with either Java 1.3 or 1.4. + Linux OPUS is no longer supported on RedHat 7.x. OPUS required a compiler upgrade to the GCC 3.2 C++ compiler for a bug-fix on Linux. Unfortunately, GCC 3.x products are not, in general, binary- compatible with the default system libraries on RedHat 7.x. If you have RedHat 7.2/7.3 and are unable to upgrade the OS, it is possible to create an environment under which OPUS may run successfully, though that is not supported. See your Linux system administrator for information on this. + The OPUS Managers Installer package (created by InstallAnywhere) does not work with GCJ (GCC Java) on RedHat 9.0. If this is the version of "java" in your path on RedHat 9.0, a workaround is to use Sun's java distribution for Linux. + Some problems were encountered while using the OPUS 4.5 Managers on a Windows PC which included very old versions of the OMG.ini and PMG.ini files. If problems arise trying to run the Managers after installation, moving these old *.ini files out of the way may be helpful. On Windows 2000, they are located in: "C:\Docs & Settings\\OPUSDATA". + On Solaris, there is a limit to the number of pipeline processes that can be run under a single OPUS account at once. With the current version, using the default configuration, this is about 500 processes. With full server logging turned on (see notes in opus_corba_objs file), this limit is lowered to approximately 300 processes. These numbers were determined on an 8-cpu SunFire domain. It is not yet known if/where this limit exists on Linux or AIX. It is expected on all operating systems that this limit can be found to be low on severely resource-constrained hardware. + ACE/TAO embeds hostnames, not IP addresses, in object references, which implies valid DNS or /etc/hosts entries must exist for every node used by OPUS. Problems related to this issue were encountered on the following systems: + Unix clusters: a memory channel cluster interconnect may have its own private IP address and hostname known only to the cluster. Nodes outside of the cluster may be unable to communicate with cluster members since the object references contain the hostname of the cluster interconnect instead of the member hostname. This problem can be worked around by defining the cluster interconnect hostname as an alias of the member hostname outside of the cluster (e.g., in a /etc/hosts file). + Nodes with periods in their hostname: Some ISP's register their dynamically assigned IP addresses to hostnames that contain periods. This confuses ACE/TAO, which incorrectly parses the hostname+domainname found in object references. + Process log files may indicate that a password was collected by the PMG for that process when in fact no password is required. In such cases, an encrypted password following the flag "-v" is present on the process command-line and should be ignored by that process. + Installation on AIX may result in the error: "gunzip: File too large". If a user sees this during installation, it is because the user's file size process limit is set too low. Use 'ulimit -f ' to raise the limit to allow the user to create files of at least 2GB in size. + OPUS shared libraries for AIX are all installed without world-read permissions. This is intentional and should NOT be reset by the user. This is an AIX 'trick' to prevent the loader from reading copies of said library objects into the system shared memory segment. Doing so can cause problems when normal C++ exceptions are thrown across shared library boundaries. Any permissions problems as a result of this may be alleviated by allowing users to be in the same group as the installer. + The Motif OMG and PMG no longer are supported or included in the OPUS distribution. + A minimum of 256 MB of physical memory is recommended for running the managers and pipeline processes on a given node. Low-memory issues were encountered running OPUS on a RedHat Linux system with 128 MB of physical memory. + Upon selecting a path to monitor/manage for the first time in the OMG, there may be a significant delay before the OMG responds while the blackboard server for that path is started. + 5.0 problem fixed in 5.4b: The OPUS 5.0 GUI installer may not run correctly on Windows XP, and not fully install the JNI libraries. If this occurs, either re-install using "Windows 2000 compatibility mode" or contact opushelp@stsci.edu for directions on where to obtain the JNI libraries for manual installation. This has been fixed in 5.4b. No problems have been found while running the 5.0 or 5.4b managers on Windows XP.