Download the Files

You can download the necessary installation files from the Altair Marketplace. You must have an Altair One account to access the files.

  1. From the Altair One Marketplace, use the upper left search tool to find the product to download.
  2. Click Download to download the product.


    Figure 1.
  3. In the panel that appears on the right side of the screen, select the Suite Version, Language and Operating System to use.
    A sub folder of updates and patches opens. You only need to download and install the files for your desired release and scenario.
    Note: You may need to click Show more... to see the entire list of packages.

Types of Downloads Available

Target Platforms

To perform an installation, download the required installation files from the Altair web site. One installation file is a tar file called Common.tar. You need to install this in every case.

Additional tar files are named by platform (machine type). You will need to download the platform-specific installation tar file for each platform you will use. These are your target platform files.

The first target platform you will consider is the one that is your main server machine, where the installed product will run. Download the tar file for this platform.

If you are using the product across a network, you will also be thinking about the platforms for each remote systems in your network. The remote systems will access their executables from the main server system, using the Network File System (NFS) and auto-mounting to access them with a local path. The installation process on the server needs to install executables for the other platforms so that the networked remote systems will have access to the executables that they will run.

Download the tar file for each platform used by your networked system.

Single File Distributables

The Single File Distributables directory contains files used for special situations. These files are used for irregular occurences; for example, when you are using the product to dispatch programs on a remote machine that does not provide an SSH or RSH interface to use by the central dispatcher to start programs. In this situation, there is a requirement to manually start a helper program on the remote tasker hosts. You get the helper programs in the Single File Distributable section.

These files are not needed for any of the basic installation scenarios. They are only needed for specific cases of expanding a network of tasker hosts where an added tasker host does not provide SSH or RSH access. When this occurs, you will find information in the product Administrator's manual about needing to download specific files to get around the lack of SSH and RSH access, and how to install and configure the downloaded files. This website section of Single File Distributables are the files that are used in those instances.

There are three types of Single File Distributables:
  • Monitor Full
  • Monitor Agent
  • Tasker Service Daemon

The Monitor full file is the version of the Monitor that is described in Server Operations in the Altair Monitor Administrator Manual.

The Monitor Agent file is the version of the Monitor that is described in Network Monitoring in the Altair Monitor Administrator Manual.

The Tasker Service Daemon file is the download file that includes the vovtsd program used to run programs on remote machines that do not allow SSH or RSH access to start programs. The vovtsd program is run on the remote tasker host and interacts with the central dispatcher to field requests to run programs on the machine it is on. This is described in Manage Remote Taskers without SSH/RSH Capabilities in the Altair Accelerator Administrators Manual.

Documentation Files

You can access the Altair Accelerator documentation through several routes.
  • After selecting a product in the Marketplace, the right hand panel lists the documents available for the selected release.


    Figure 2.
  • From Altair Community, you can view, filter and sort through the most recent Accelerator product guides.
  • Access the help from within the product installation (/doc directory).
The Documentation directory contains the PDF product help files for all the products. They are available to download.

The The Art of Flows by Andrea Casotto and Timothy Barnes is available as a free ebook download here. This book is the definitive explanation about the dynamics of managing a complex job mix such as ones used in the chip design process. Files, programs, and their dependencies are the fundamental issues for scheduling and deploying jobs in any design-oriented activity. This volume explains the importance of the problem, and how best to solve it.

This book is highly recommended as a practical guide to the value of using Altair Accelerator products with its clear introduction to dependency graphs and the importance of run time discovery of input and output files.

Advanced Commands

Advanced commands are available for more detailed operations. For information about the Altair Accelerator family of commands, refer to the Global Command List.