How to Download, Install, and Start the APT Tools using Linux

New update on KDE problem. It's fixed!!:There was a problem in Cycle 16 and 17 with some pop up windows on linux machines running the K Desktop Environment (KDE). The problem was actually a bug in KDE's kwin interaction with Java which causes the windowing system to crash following dismissal of some pop up windows (most notably the successful submission pop up in Phase I). KDE's bug lives on in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but the good news is that the APT developers found a way to avoid the bug. This fix is available starting with APT 17.5 which was released on 11/02/09.

Supported Systems

The APT tools are highly graphical and interactive applications and therefore run best on a robust machine. The APT will run on Redhat Enterprise, but usually works on Redhat 7.3 and higher and equivalents. For small proposals in Phase I a 400Mhz Pentium II or equivalent and 256 Megabytes RAM (memory) should generally be sufficient, but for Phase II work we highly recommend 512 Megabytes. Please see our memory discussion for more information.

Additional System Configuration Issues:

The APT package has generally run fine on other versions of linux but we are only testing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS release 4 now. You definitely have to have a linux with a kernel of 2.4 or higher.
APT is a 32-bit application. If your machine has 64-bit architecture, you will have to have the 32-bit compatibility libraries installed on your machine in order for APT to work.
You will need Acroread 5.0 or higher installed on your machine. To check your version, start acroread and select "About Acrobat Reader" from the Help menu.
You should have the web browser plugin Shockwave 5.0 or higher for viewing the training movies. (In Netscape you can check your version by clicking on "About Plugins" in the Help menu.)
Depending on your institution's computer security measures (firewalls, blocked ports, etc.), you may initially have communication trouble with APT. If you have any concerns please see our firewall webpage.

How to find out about new releases

We maintain an internal distribution list for announcing new releases of APT. This may be helpful to people who install APT for others to use. Send an e-mail to majordomo@stsci.edu which contains the line:

subscribe apt-users

1. UnInstall the previous version

Note: If you are going to install APT in the same directory as a previous version, please remove the previous version first. But if you are going to install in a separate directory, you would only need to uninstall to save disk space (and possible version confusion).

Here are instructions for getting rid of the old version:

Remove APT using the uninstaller (Uninstall_APT).
If some directories remain, it means that you and/or APT stored some files in the installation directory. You may want to double check that something you want (such as a proposal file from last year) is not in there.
After you have retrieved anything you want to save, delete the entire directory tree where you installed it. (The unix command rm -rf [directory] makes this quick because it gets rid of all the subdirectories and does not ask you about overriding permissions.)

2. Quit out of other applications (optional)

This is not required, but for some older machines there may be trouble installing if the resources of the machine are being used by other applications.

3. Download and Install

Choose your operating system: APT contains Java Virtual Machine (JVM) 1.5.0_08-b03. So there is a different APT for each major platform. The installation page you enter next can choose the correct version for your machine for you (just click on the button below the words "Recommended installation for your platform"). Or just choose the linux platform from the "Available Installers" table and follow the instructions.

Get the most out of your machine's memory: During installation you will be given the option of stating how much memory your machine has.

Choose the first option if:

your machine has less than 512 MB of memory.
you don't know how much memory you have (memory can be determined with the "top" unix command).
you are doing a site installation and some of your users have less than 512 MB of memory.

Choose the second option if your machine has between 512 MB and 1 GB of memory.
Choose the third option if your machine has 1 GB or more of memory.

Proceed to the Installation...

(If you are in Europe you should use the mirrored download site in Germany).

4. Troubleshooting

If the installer tells you that "errors occurred" during installation, look at the installation log which is located in: <installation dir>/APT*_InstallLog.log

If you have a problem you can check if you have one of the common problems below. If you don't find your problem you can generate debug and sometimes that will reveal the problem (insufficient disk space for instance).

You can contact us for help at help@stsci.edu if you have problems with installation that you are unable to solve for yourself. Please send us the debug you generated (in line, not as an attachment). It would also be useful to tell us your exact flavor of linux which you can get from the commands: "uname -a" and "more /etc/issue".

Known Installation/Download Problems:

APT window blank

A user running Red Hat Enterprise 5 with Gnome Desktop environment 2.16.0 found that APT came up with a blank screen (save for the Name of the program in the title bar). The problem was resolved by turning off two visual effects (Windows Wobble and Workspaces on Cube).

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError

If you get this error when invoking APT:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: gov/nasa/gsfc/sea/targettuner/TargetTunerModule

SELinux issue

One user had trouble installing on Fedora Core 4. The error message in the debug started with:

java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError

He diagnosed the problem as being related to the SELinux feature of FC4. So he simply turned off SELinux (as root) with the command:

/usr/sbin/setenforce 0

He said that this command must be rerun each time the computer is restarted. We do not have experience with FC4 or SELinux, so we are not aware of a more elegant solution.

Segmentation fault

If when you bring up the APT program for the first time you get:

./APT: line 1: 23262 Segmentation fault

"/home/yourname/APT1300/jre/bin/java" -Xmx134217728 com.zerog.lax.LAX
  
"/home/yourname/APT1300/APT.lax" "/tmp/env.properties.23199"

The work around is to edit the script called runAPT in the installation directory to insert:

      ulimit -s 2048

right after the initial: #!/bin/sh

Problem with Uninstaller link

Because of a bug, reinstalling APT on a linux system without first uninstalling may lead to a message at the end of the installation that "some errors occurred". If you check the log in the installation directory it will probably say that there was a problem creating the link for the Uninstaller. This is not a problem for running APT and can be ignored, but if you would prefer to have a valid Uninstaller link available you can redo the installion after first deleting the old Uninstaller link in your home directory.

5. Start

Once you have installed the APT you invoke it with a script. For instance to start the APT type ./APT in your home directory. (By default links are put in your home directory.)

Once the program is started you will be presented with the main APT screen.

6. Help

There is a a series of short training movies which will help get you started (there are also web pages with screen shots available on the same page). APT also has documentation available from the "Help" menu (the right most menu on the menu bar).

If you can't find what you need, please contact us at help@stsci.edu.