CSU Maple Installation

v. 0.36, Dec 9, 2007

Zube (Zube@cs.colostate.edu)

This guide is an evolving document. Please help make it better. If you have any additions, suggestions or corrections, please mail me.

Prologue

The installation of maple can be frustrating, especially on a unix machine. This document is an attempt to make it a bit easier.

This document is not a "complete" anything. It will not tell you, step by painful step, how to click the continue button. Nor will it cover most things that are listed in the Maple Installation and Licensing Guide. (See the wonderfully terse Install.html on the cdrom plus any *.txt files in the various installation directories for those bits). This document will cover the small number of installations I performed and will hint on how to do others. The unix section is far and away the most detailed.

Asking for Help

I'm willing to assist people at CSU who are having installation problems, but my current obligations already far surpass my current time constraints. If you are having problems, please mail me with as much relevant detail as possible (platform, what things you tried (in detail!), any error messages (verbatim), etc.) and please be patient. Requests for help in the next 5 minutes because you absolutely, positively need to have maple up and running will be cheerfully ignored.

Who can use Maple?

Maple is licensed by CSU for CSU machines only. Faculty (and staff) have home-use rights (that is, they may install Maple on their home computers for the duration of their employment) but students, alas, do not. The Software Cellar sells the Maple 10 Student Edition for $168.72.

Latest News

Maple 11 for Windows Vista

Maple 11 now supports Windows Vista. The Vista version can be downloaded from Maple 11 Windows Vista page if you have the CSU code for another version of Maple. If you don't, please mail Zube and he'll get it for you.

Maple 11.02 has been Released

If you are running Maple 11, you can download the 11.02 update from the Maple 11.02 update details and downloads page.

Maple 11 has been Released

Maple 11 for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and Solaris is available from the CSU Software Cellar. Maple 11 does not exist for AIX, HP-UX, TRU64, IRIX and Win 98/ME/NT. On June 16, 2006, Maplesoft announced that they were discontinuing further development for those platforms.

There are four disks available:

The system requirements for Maple 11 are here.

Sadly, Maple (since version 10) requires activation. If you cannot activate the program, it will not run. At the end of the Maple install, the program will ask you if you wish to activate. It will also ask for a first and last name and an email address, although those fields don't seem to matter.

If the machine you are installing Maple 11 on is not connected to the net, you can go to the Maple Offline Activation Page on another computer and fill in the bits and (hopefully) they will send you what you need via email. It's much easier to be connected though, as there is usually no fuss.

For those of you who think this silliness isn't worth it, see The Comprehensive R Archive Network for R, an S-plus like program that is nicely Gnu-ed.

There are three different activation numbers: one for CSU single-user use, one for CSU network use and one for home use. Please make sure you have the right one when you borrow the cd(s) from the Software Cellar.

Mac Installation

There isn't much to the Mac install. Insert the cdrom, click on the appropriate Maple 11 installer (PPC or Intel) and off you go (after typing in the Administrator password, natch). When the installer is finished, it will ask for the activation code, name and email address. The activation code matters, the other fields do not.

Windows Installation

If d: is your cdrom drive, the setup program is in d:\Windows\Disk1\InstData\VM and is called Maple11WindowsInstaller.exe. However, the program will autorun if your cdrom is set to do so. It sometimes takes a bit of time to start on some machines, so please be patient. There is a readme file and an Install.html file in the d:\windows directory if you are interested in details.

The install is mostly follow-your-nose, but you have two choices to make.

First, do you want a full, minimal or custom install? Full is Maple + the Watcom C compiler, minimal is Maple without the compiler and custom allows the choice of either of these, along with the bizarre choice of installing just the Watcom C compiler. Most users will probably choose minimal, although the Watcom C compiler is necessary if you wish to use the Maple Compiler.

Second, do you want a single-user or network license? Unless you will be setting up a license server somewhere, you'll probably choose a single-user license.

Finally, you get to activate the silly thing and type in your first and last names and your email address. The activation code matters, the rest do not. After a reboot, you should be good to go.

There are two interfaces to maple that are installed. One is called "standard", uses java and is more memory intensive, the other is called "classic worksheet" and should be more familiar to users of previous versions. Please run ?compatibility after running maple for the first time to see the differences and to learn about all the bad things that can happen if you use the standard interface and then switch to classic.

For Maple 11, the install no longer drops an icon for Classic Worksheet on the desktop. Get to it from the Start Menu or create an icon that points to c:\Program Files\Maple 11\bin.win\cwmaple.exe.

"Linux Single" User Installation

This installation is a hybrid of the PC and unix installations. It is a unix installation in that you must mount the cdrom (see the unix section), cd to wherever you mounted it and and then run the appropriate installer:

However, like the PC installation, you do not need to fuss about the FLEXlm licensing bits. The installation will ask you for an install directory, if you want a single-user or network license. When the install is complete it asks for the authentication code. The xmaple and maple programs are installed to INSTALLDIR/bin (where INSTALLDIR is wherever you told maple to install the program).

Like the windows version, maple and xmaple come in two flavors: standard and classic. standard uses java and is more memory intensive, "classic worksheet" should be more familiar to users of previous versions. Please run ?compatibility after running maple for the first time to see the differences and to learn about all the bad things that can happen if you use the standard interface and then switch to classic. Starting maple or xmaple will bring up the standard interface, starting either with the -cw option will bring up the classic interface.

Unix Installation

The unix installation isn't terribly hard, but it can be tricky and vexing when compared to the windows and mac installations. Keep in mind that there are really two sets of programs that get installed:

For the first network installation and for all standalone installations, you need both sets of programs. When maple is invoked, it needs to query a license server to check out a license before it runs, so you must have a license server running for maple to work. Once you have a working license server, all other network installations can simply query the working one.

Two notes: the way I did this does not necessarily follow the Maple Guide. Caveat Installer. Also, it assumes you have root on the machine.

Here's how I set up my machine. Typed commands are in bold.

That's it. When you now run /usr/local/maple11/bin/maple or /usr/local/maple11/bin/xmaple, it should start up and life should be happy. After you get the maple license manager working on unixbox, all other maple installations do not need any flexlm configuration; perform the install, skip all the flexlm stuff, edit the license.dat to point to the license server (unixbox) and Bob's your Uncle.

Odds and Ends

I have not tried to set up the FLEXlm server stuff on a PC, although I'm sure it's possible and it's probably easier than the unix/mac version.

Acknowledgments of Thanks