Verify the Installation

Install the License

Before you can verify the installation, you will need to install the proper licensing. Follow the instructions in Licensing to enable execution of Altair Accelerator software.

Quick Verification

After completing the installation and setting up your shell environment, you can do a quick verify that the install was successful by running a program that reports on the installed version. This confirms that the installed program is accessible on your PATH and that it is the version you expect.

Use the vovversion program to confirm you are accessing the desired version of the product.

Running this command should give you the expected version number, and the expected location where you have installed the product.

It is also a good practice to check that your environment variables have been set up correctly: 
> source /<install_path>/<version>/<platform>/common/etc/vovrc.csh
% vovversion -all
2020.1
VOVDIR=/opt/rtda/2020.1/linux
You should see the expected version number, and the expected location where you have installed the product.

vovversion

Print the VOV version. Optionally show more details.


vovversion: Usage Message

DESCRIPTION:
    Print the VOV version. Optionally show more details.

USAGE:
    vovversion [options]

OPTIONS:
    -help      -- Print this message
    -all       -- Print all available version information
    -clients   -- List clients and their version numbers
    -install   -- Print the VOV version with patch names, if any
    -patches   -- Print patch names, if any
    -project   -- Print the version of vovserver associated with the
                  current project
    -short     -- Print VOV version with short patch name, if any
    -verify    -- Ensure server and client versions match

    [Can abbreviate options provided they are unambiguous]

Visual Verification

You can navigate around the install area to make sure that there are subdirectories for each platform that you requested to be installed.

When you set up your environment in the previous section, you set the environment variable VOVDIR to be the path to your platform specific files. You can navigate to that area of the installed files to look around to see the other platform files.

If you only specified one platform - the one you are on - then there is nothing to see other than the executable files for your platform that are in $VOVDIR/bin. 
% cd $VOVDIR/bin
% ls
If you specified other platforms, then you can navigate to see the platform executables in the install area of the file system that will be used by remote machines of a given type, accessing them from the install area. 
% cd $VOVDIR
% cd ..
% ls
# expect to see directory names corresponding to platform names

You can see the subdirectories there for each platform that was installed. Verify that there is a subdirectory there for each platform you requested to be installed.

You can also view the installation log file in $VOVDIR/../install<datestamp>.log that was created during the install process.

Rigorous Verification

After you have confirmed that the correct installation is accessible, you can do a rigorous check on the state of the install using a program that checks on a variety of aspects of your installation.

This will report on deeper issues with regard to the install and the configuration and the environment.

Use the vovcheck program as solid verification of the Altair Accelerator product installation.

You should run this program after you install a new version of Altair Accelerator software, or as needed to help with troubleshooting.

vovcheck

Basic check of configuration of VOV installation, configuration, and project setup.


vovcheck: Usage Message
  
      DESCRIPTION:
      Basic check of configuration of VOV installation, 
      configuration, and project setup.
      
      USAGE:
      % vovcheck [options]
      
      OPTIONS:
      -h                         -- This help.
      -report  <file>            -- Name report file.
      -installation              -- Check the installation (default).
      -project                   -- Check the project.
      -t                         -- Turn on Tcl tracing (for debugging).
      -v                         -- Increase verbosity.
      
      FANCY OPTIONS:
      -class  {NP|PD|PS|PU}      -- Specify class of tests to perform.
      -- NP = No project   (check installation)
      -- PD = Project down
      -- PS = Project sick
      -- PU = Project up   (check project)
      
      EXAMPLES:
      % vovcheck
      % vovcheck -installation 
      % vovcheck -project
      % vovcheck -report myreport.txt

Comments

As mentioned at the end of the vovcheck output above, the program creates a more detailed report in a file in the tmp directory. You must look at this report in order to interpret the results of the checking.

The output shows the focus of each test, along with the products for which the test is applicable and the result of the test. Not all checks are meaningful for all products or all environments. For your specific environment, a WARN or ERROR may be the expected and correct result.

The standard output will show WARN and ERROR results as a way to alert you to look within the report file to read the details about vovcheck has noticed.

The Products column indicates the product for which the test applies. You can ignore a WARN or ERROR result for a test that is checking an aspect of a product you are not using.

Look at the report file to see the details about each test's results. The report file has clear and detailed explanations about was expected and what was noticed, that can help you interpret the report. It also provides a hint on what to fix or change so that the vovcheck program will not produce the alert when doing the test.

Deep Verification Checks

The following table gives additional detail about the function of each check performed by vovcheck.

N Check Meaning
1 BasicVariables Checks that environment variables VOVDIR, VOVARCH, VOV_HOST_NAME, VOV_PROJECT_NAME are set. Needed by all VOV projects.
2 CwdPermissions Checks that you have read/write permission for the current directory, needed to run jobs there in Accelerator
3 EnvBase Verifies that the BASE environment exists and can be entered, and that a few basic UNIX and Altair Accelerator programs are in the PATH in that environment.
4 GuiCustomization Checks for an old filename for GUI customization, and if present advises of the correct location.
5 HostPortConflicts Checks the registry and advises if more than one project on the same host uses the same TCP port. Only one of such projects may be started, since the OS only allows one process to listen on a given port at a time.
6 Installation Verifies that the Linux OS version is compatible with the Altair Accelerator libraries for runtime tracing.
7 Check Checks for an old filename for Make.tcl defaults, and if present advises of the correct location.
9 RshSsh Tries to verify whether there is a remote shell command set up that works to the current host without a password. The owner of Accelerator must be able to remote-shell from the vovserver host to the farm hosts to start the vovtasker.
10 SecurityPermissions Checks the permissions on $VOVDIR/etc/cgi and other directories and files in the installation.
11 TaskerRoot Verifies that $VOVDIR/bin/vovtaskerroot exists and has the desired ownership and permissions. This is needed in Accelerator so that jobs can run in the account of their submitter, so as to have the correct privileges with respect to the submitter's files.
12 SshSetup Verifies that the ~/.ssh directory has correct permissions to permit ssh to operate. This directory must be owned by the user or root, and not be readable by anyone else.
13 UsrTmp Verifies that the directory /usr/tmp exists and is writable. Some Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) do not include this by default.
14 VovPermissions Verifies ownership and permissions of files in the bin and scripts directory of the Altair Accelerator installation.
15 WritableLocal Checks permissions on directories $VOVDIR/local/{capsules,environments,cgi,scripts} where site-specific customizations are stored. These may be writable to permit users to add items when using FlowTracer, or not writable and under admin control when only Accelerator/Monitor are in use.
16 WritableRegistry Verifies that the Altair Accelerator registry directory $VOVDIR/local/registry is writable. This is needed so that the vovproject create command can add files there. These files contain the metadata used to locate, start, stop, etc. VOV projects.
17 vovrc Verifies that the source-able Altair Accelerator setup files created during installation are present. These are $VOVDIR/etc/vovrc.{csh,sh,tcl}. The vovrc.sh file is especially important to Accelerator, because it is used to set the environment when starting vovtaskers on the farm hosts.