How To Download And Run NCSA Mosaic
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NCSA Mosaic is an Internet-based global hypermedia browser, available
free for academic, research, and internal commercial use.
If at any time you have questions or problems with NCSA Mosaic, please
feel free to send electronic mail to:
[email protected]
The NCSA Mosaic anonymous FTP distribution site is ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.
Program files are in directory /Mosaic.
Executable Binaries
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The easiest way to download Mosaic is to retrieve an executable binary
from subdirectory Mosaic-binaries. The following binaries are
distributed:
Mosaic-sun.gz Sun 4, SunOS 4.1.x
Mosaic-sun-lresolv.gz Sun 4, SunOS 4.1.x, no DNS
Mosaic-sgi.gz Silicon Graphics, IRIX 4.x.
Mosaic-indy.gz Silicon Graphics, IRIX 5.x.
Mosaic-ibm.gz IBM RS/6000, AIX 3.2.
Mosaic-dec.gz DEC MIPS Ultrix.
Mosaic-alpha.gz DEC Alpha AXP, OSF/1.
Mosaic-hp700.gz HP 9000/700, HP/UX 9.x
To download a binary, put your FTP session into binary mode (type
'binary', without the quotes), pull down the file, quit the FTP
session, uncompress the binary (type, e.g., 'gunzip
Mosaic-sun.gz' without the quotes), make the binary executable (type,
e.g., 'chmod 755 Mosaic-sun'), and execute the binary.
Run-Time Problems
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There are three problems that you may hit when you run a Mosaic binary
for the first time. They are discussed in order of decreasing
severity.
(a) Mosaic dumps core. Most likely, this is because your system is
slightly misconfigured. Try starting Mosaic back up with with the
following command-line flag:
Mosaic-sun -ghbnie
If Mosaic works with the -ghbnie flag, then your system is
coredumping while trying to discover its own fully qualified
hostname with the gethostbyname() system call; contact your system
or network administrator.
If Mosaic still doesn't work, follow the instructions displayed as
Mosaic dumps core and send a bug report to
[email protected].
(b) An error message shows up in the Mosaic window saying that Mosaic
couldn't retrieve a file over the network.
There are three possible explanations:
(1) You aren't connected to the Internet.
(2) You are behind a firewall.
(3) Your system can't resolve the remote machine name
'www.ncsa.uiuc.edu'.
(There is the additional possibility that the central NCSA
document server might be temporarily down, in which case you
should try running Mosaic again in a few minutes.)
If the problem is (1) or (2), your network administrator will have
to find some way to fix it.
If the problem is (3), and you're running on a Sun, try the binary
named Mosaic-sun-lresolv. If this still doesn't work, or if
you're not on a Sun, then contact your network administrator.
(c) You see lots of warning messages in the terminal window.
If you get warning messages (generally about missing "keysyms" or
fonts) but the Mosaic window comes up and stays up, then the
situation isn't serious and Mosaic will run be running normally.
Read the online Frequently Asked Questions for more information on
how to make the warning messages stop showing up.
Some X servers refuse to run Mosaic when all of the fonts Mosaic
requests upon startup are missing. If this happens to you,
send mail to
[email protected] for more help.
Source Code
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The complete Mosaic source code distribution is located in
subdirectory Mosaic-source. The distribution comes as a single
compressed tar file, and can be compiled on most Unix systems. You
must have the X11R4 (or later) and Motif 1.1 (or later) header files
and libraries on your system to compile Mosaic.
See the README in the source code distribution for more information on
compiling Mosaic.
External Viewers
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Mosaic assumes the presence of a number of external viewers --
programs that Mosaic can use to allow you to view images, movies,
PostScript files, etc. that are retrieved over the network.
See the subdirectory Mosaic-viewers for copies of the normal source
distributions of some of these viewers. We strongly recommend
downloading and installing these viewers if they do not already exist
on your system, as Mosaic will be much more useful with them present.
For more information on these viewers, see the online documentation.
More Information
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More information is available online, through Mosaic.
