(Why Did) OpenSuse (Do That?), GAMESS-US, And libg2c

The OpenSuse 10.0 CD set, still the only distro to install cleanly on my Precision M70, DOESN'T contain lots of useful developmental software and libraries some of ye olde quantum chemical codes need to run. This is painfully apparent to those who have downloaded the pre-compiled GAMESS-US code and found it not to do run (and what's with the OSX in the README?) because of missing libg2c files. Yes, even real tech geeks are too lazy to make some days. That may have come out wrong.

If your goal is just to get the program running, the quick fix is to feed your machine just the libraries (a proper compilation or, uh, more complete Linux installation would also work, but that's beyond the scope of this blog). This involves the following:

1. Go to rpm.pbone.net or your favorite rpm search engine.

2. Search for "libg2c"

3. Download the libg2c-3.3.6-3.i586.rpm (or machine specific) rpm. Version 3.3.X because the precompiled GAMESS-US code was done with g77 3.3 and why risk any more hassle. I've one local i586 copy on this site for when I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't want to bother with problematic rpm repositories.

4. On the problematic Linux box, login as root (su). With the libg2c file in the current directory, install the rpm.

su
rpm -i libg2c-3.3.6-3.i586.rpm

(or whatever flavor you have).

5. Wait patiently.

6. Upon completion, GAMESS-US should work just fine in single-processor mode (that is to say, if you've got a dual core or dual chip, you should still be having some MPI issues to resolve with Suse).

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