Information about Downloading and Installing Cvt2Mae
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You may freely download and install the current release of Cvt2Mae. We recommend downloading the stable current release, however we may from time to time make available a beta release while we are testing new features and bug fixes. If you have previously installed Cvt2Mae and you want to update just the Java .jar file, you can do this as described in Section 1.3 below. Press the download button to start the install process.

Download and Install Cvt2Mae.

Distribution contents

  1. We recommend including the Jave Virtual Machine(JVM) for a more robust installation. This will not affect any of your other Java applications or Web browsers as it is used only with Cvt2Mae.
  2. The distribution includes:

1. Procedure for downloading and installing Cvt2Mae

1. Click here for the Cvt2Mae installer download page. This Web page allows you to select the Cvt2Mae to download for your operating system. If you have problems downloading the installer with Netscape 4.7x or later, then try Internet Explorer 5.0. It could be a Mime/type problem with your browser setup.

2. You start the download process when you click on the installer for your computer platform. (You may alternatively use the default installer discussed below.) Follow the directions it provides as you download the installer. It also provides instructions in the "View" hyperlink adjacent to the operating system you selected that tells you what to do after you finished the download. Part of the installation consists of telling the installer where you want to 1) put the executable installer (a temporary directory where you have lots of room is a good choice), and 2) the "installation" directory where you will typically leave the distribution after the installer unpacks it.

We use the commercial InstallAnywhere(TM) program to create the installer which are programs for a vareity of operating systems including:

Other systems will be added as installers become available through InstallAnywhere (www.ZeroG.com).

1.1 The Default Installer

Alternatively, you can use the default installer that is selected for your computer. If you want to control where the files are saved on your computer, then use the explicit installer for your particular platform described above.

The default installer will put the installer executable in a fixed directory and the installed Cvt2Mae files in another fixed directory.

1.2 Installation Notes

Currently, the Windows and Linux installers are robust. We have had mixed success with Mac OS and Solaris.

Note that the installers (where possible) will include a copy of a recent Java Virtual Machine (JVM) from InstallAnywhere(TM) to make running Cvt2Mae on your computer more robust. This is used locally and only affects the running of Cvt2Mae. It will not affect any other Java applications on your computer. In the case of Mac OS, if you have an older version of the MRJ JVM, it will ask you if you want to upgrade to the newer version (MRJ-2.4.5) - however you do not have to unless you want to.

The Cvt2Mae appendix describes the details of using the Cvt2Mae converter. Several PDF tutorials are also available here.

1.3 Downloading just the Cvt2Mae.jar file after initial install

If you have previously done an installation. you may avoid a complete re-installation download by getting just the latest Java Cvt2Mae.jar file. You should replace the old version of this file on your system with the one you are downloading. This will work if the new Cvt2Mae.jar file does not depend on any new entries in the configuration files (which generally the case - try it and see what happens).

2. Problems installing Cvt2Mae on some operating systems

  1. The MacOS installer is available, but may not work with older versions of MacOS. In addition, there may be problems if your file names are longer than 32 characters. For now, the solution is to use short file names. There may also be problems if your data files have embedded carriage returns in addition to line feeds. For now, the solution is to strip the CRs out of the data file.

  2. On Solaris, and possibly other Unix systems, you may have problems with the stack limits. Do a "man limit" to read about the command for your particular Unix shell. We have found that the following seems to work. For the Unix C-shell (csh), add the following to your .cshrc startup file. 
       limit stacksize unlimited
    In addition, we have set the default stack size that Cvt2Mae uses to 256Mbytes. If your computer has less physical memory, it will page. You may also increase this number as well if you have more memory and want to use it. The solution is to edit the Cvt2Mae.lax file found where you installed Cvt2Mae. Change the two instances of memory allocation from 256000000 to a smaller number that is less than your actual memory size.

  3. On Solaris, if you download the version with the JVM, unless your Solaris system has been updated recently, it may not be able to find the libCrun.so.xxx version required by the JVM. Try downloading the non-JVM version or update your Solaris system.

  4. If you have problems with the Sun installer, you may need to update your Solaris OS system patch set. It is not a single patch. It is the latest Recommended Patch Cluster from Sun. We STRONGLY recommend having your SysAdmin do this for you if you have not done this before. Point your Web browser to: 
      http://sunsolve.Sun.COM/pub-cgi/show.pl?target=patches/patch-access
    and choose the appropriate patch set for the version of Solaris (2.6, 7, or 8) that you are running. Do not choose any of the x86 versions unless you are running Solaris x86. Click on either the Download HTTP option or Download FTP option, and click the "GO" button to download the patch set.

2.2 The Cvt2Mae Error Log Files

Each time you run Cvt2Mae, it creates or overides the previous error log files called StdOutLog.log and StdErrorLog.log in the installation-directory. If you are experiencing major problems, these files are useful to us in helping figure out what is wrong. Otherwise, just ignore them.

2.3 Sun Solaris (or other Unix system) Memory Problems

We have on occasion seen the following types of memory errors. This discusses how to handle them.

Cvt2Mae Stack size Memory Error on Sun Solaris

Running Cvt2Mae on a Solaris (or other Unix system) may produce an error similar to: 

  % Cvt2Mae
 
  Stack size of 97664 Kb exceeds current limit of 8192 Kb.
  (Stack sizes are rounded up to a multiple of the system page size.)
  See limit(1) to increase the stack size limit.
If the Sun (under Solaris) is slow in loading Cvt2Mae or has memory errors (shown above) one should first see what the memory limits are set to on your machine using the "limit" command. If they are too small they should be increased or set to "unlimited" (see in 2.4 above

Cvt2Mae LAX file

If the problems persist, one might have to edit the Cvt2Mae.lax file found in the Cvt2Mae directory (see example below). The default memory settings in the Cvt2Mae.lax file (found in the installation directory) should be no larger than the total memory of the machine or paging problems will occur. For instance, if you have 192Mb of memory in your Sun, edit the "lax.nl.java.option.native.stack.size.max" and "lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.max" options to be under 192Mb. You can use any text editor to do this. More memory may be needed to be installed on your Sun to run Cvt2Mae with very large datasets.

Default Lax settings
The Lax file is a startup file generated by InstallAnywhere when we packaged Cvt2Mae. It is used when Cvt2Mae starts up on your computer. We currently set the memory limits to 256Mbytes. If you have more memory, you can edit the Lax file to have it use more memory. 

 
  #   LAX.NL.JAVA.OPTION.JAVA.HEAP.SIZE.MAX
  #   -------------------------------------
  lax.nl.java.option.java.heap.size.max=256000000
 
 
  #   LAX.NL.JAVA.OPTION.NATIVE.STACK.SIZE.MAX
  #   ----------------------------------------
  lax.nl.java.option.native.stack.size.max=256000000

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