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Date:Mon Jan 29 02:35:52 2002 
Subject:Re: Re. Installing Poplog under SuSE Linux 7.3 
From:Aaron Sloman See text for reply address 
Volume-ID:1020129.02 

[To reply replace "Aaron.Sloman.XX" with "A.Sloman"]

cglur@onwe.co.za writes:

> Date: 25 Jan 2002 11:47:41 GMT
> Organization: The South African Internet Exchange

Commenting on

> Paul (1st Year AICS) wrote:
> ...
> * INSTALL_MOTIF_POPLOG ,
> ...
> you clearly have the 'big gun Texan' approach:
>  "if you don't suceed at first, just use a bigger hammer,
>  otherwise just nuke-em-baby".

A fair comment for some people but this student had been using a
poplog system with a lot of facilities on machines (suns, dec
alphas, and now PCs running linux) in the departmental teching labs,
and was trying to recreate the same poplog environment (with the
same things pre-compiled) on his PC+linux.

The shell scripts he ran are included in a CD we make available for
our students. They are all now available in the tar-ball in this
package
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/linux-cd

They were created by me and tested on Redhat 7.1 and 7.2, where they
worked without problems in new installations on various PCs and
laptops. Our students can also purchase from our library a CD pack
including Redhat 7.1. For some reason he chose to get Suse instead.

(I still plan to reorganise the linux poplog package and make it
more modular. One thing I have now learnt is that I need to change
documentation to refer to termcap.)

> As a student, your end product is knowledge, NOT the biggest, most
> complicated installation.

So Paul was just following instructions from a tutor, in an attempt
to replicate the environment used in the teaching labs. The point
was to make it possible for him to play with the same packages,
teach files, demos, etc. as work on the departmental unix machines.

> Consider that before you can experiment with AI algorithms on poplog,
> you've got to get through the layers of complication of (for the route
> you've chosen):
> 1. Motif
> 2. X-windows
> 3. Poplog

That lot is already provided and introduced (though not all in much
detail) in the introductory AI programming courses (until now taught
on Suns running Solaris and Alphas running digital unix: the
differences are mostly hidden from students. Mostly it's all the
same in linux at the level at which the introductory AI course
works.)

> 4. Linux

Teaching this is not an objective of the course. It is expected that
students will somehow get a version of linux installed, and then
install our teaching materials and use them more or less as they use
them on the Suns and Alphas.

> The concept of successive refinement (start simple and keep control
> while you elaborate) is a well proven method in computing - and life
> in general.

This is certainly good advice for someone working in isolation and
trying to install a complex software package with all sorts of
interdependencies.

> As one with little knowledge/enthusiasm for Linux I'll try to analyse some
> of your trace provided; more to give you a view of 'methods' of handling
> such problems, rather than giving particular answers.  I guess your task
> is to learn AI, CS not specifically Linux ?

This stuff is being used in an introductory AI course. It is also
used in later courses, and in projects. (The CS course teaches
Java..)

> ...
> > mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/local/poplog': File exists
 
> I guess this was your second (or more) attempt ?
> After the first attempt the directory `/usr/local/poplog' already existed,
> so further/later attempts to re-make-dir are errors.

Yes, this problem should go away after I modify my scripts to test
whether the directories and symbolic links already exist. All my
stuff was written in haste. I am not a shell scripting expert!

> > mv: cannot stat `/usr/local/poplog/local/help/latex': No such file or diretory

I was puzzled by this error. Probably something poorly designed in
one of my ancient shell scripts.

> My version doesn't have this stuff.  Which has its own *tar.gz
> There's no point in adding to the bloat and complication by adding the
>    latex documentation (and the japanese text) when you're trying to get
>    started ?   I.e. it's not need to run poglog.

My package for students includes latex since many of us encourage
students to learn to use latex for writing their reports, and there
are ved-based teach files that make it relatively easy to learn to
use it (driven from Ved), at least to do simple things.

All these students do projets and have to write reports on them.
Unfortunately they have generally learnt to use word at school and
so tend to think that's the only tool for writing reports. Not very
nice if it means re-booting your machine to run windows.

(StarOffice works but requires downloading a file that is about 100
mbytes or more. Ridiculous bloat.)

> > /usr/local/poplog/v15.53/pop/pop/basepop11: error while loading shared libraries: libtermcap.so.2:
> This is IMPORTANT/essential.

Thanks to a recent message from a Suse user I hope the termcap
problem has now been solved.

> My version has got the ELF executable: ./v15.53/pop/pop/basepop11
> BTW, for navigating around the dir-tree,
>    viewing/editing/moving/copying files,
>    searching, changing permission ....and much more,
>    ALL VISUALLY !! you can't beat mc .
> It's on most installations of linux.
> Use it best in VT mode (non-X).
> I usually have 4 or 5 VTs running it:
>   1 to build/edit my log,
>   a few to read documentation ; cut and paste to my log
>   some to navigate the dir-tree    ...etc.

mc is nice, but I think emacs users do the same sort of thing in
emacs with dired, and Ved users can do something like it with
ved_dired (and also ved_diff, ved_cdiff).

> Talking about 'starting from a minimal system', it would be good if
> one of our senior-members listed the dir tree of the essential file set.

Alas, it is different for different classes of users. Someone taking
one of our AI degree courses who needs to replicate our teaching
environment will need a lot more than someone who simply wishes to
learn the basics of pop-11.

I agree that it would be useful to have a downloadable package which
contains only what is needed for that.

It could be that Steve Isard's mini-linux-pop is such a package,
though I have not looked closely.
    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/mini-linux-pop/

Aaron
====
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk   (ReadATas@please !)
PAPERS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/ (And free book on Philosophy of AI)
FREE TOOLS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/freepoplog.html