Re: Downloading swarm, etc.

[Mark H. Butler]

Mr X. Y. Huang writes:

> <snip>
> their interests, their problems, and their suggestions about Swarm, I 
> decided to have a serious try to download it.

> Can anyone give me some information about requirements for
> (1) set up Linux operation system
> (2) set X window (is that the best for graphics when Swarm is used)
> (3) download Swarm library

I don't claim to be an expert on these things but I've done them all quite
recently so I'll offer my experiences.

Linux requires at least a 386 machine. X Windows requires at least 8Mb of
RAM; 16 (or even 32Mb) is better. A Pentium 75 machine with 16MB of ram
would be fine. You also need some free hard disk space - the more the
better really. I don't know what the minimum figure is for Linux but in my
experience I wouldn't recommend anything less than 400MB; at the moment
I've got 1.7 MB (half my disk) devoted to Linux and with Swarm and some
other simulators like PlaNet, Genesis, Cellang etc its about 50% full.
Another possible difficulty with running Linux is your graphics card - it
needs to be supported by Xfree. Xfree development seems to lag behind the
cutting edge of graphics cards - it pays to have an older card rather than
the fastest one you can find. You can check out what is supported at Xfree
(http://www.xfree86.org).

Another problem is you have to make two new partitions for Linux - one for
swap space and the other for Linux itself. This is a pain as it means
deleting what is already on your hard disk, repartioning and re-installing
everything. This is fine if you've got all your install disks. If not
you'll have to try backing up to tape (not a solution I'd recommend with 95
- I can never get this to work correctly) or perhaps a solution is to buy
(or borrow) a cheap hard-drive and put Linux on that. There's various
utilities which allow you to repatition hard drives without deleting what's
on them - I've no experience of them though. There's also a utility called
Loadlin which allows you to mount Linux on a dos partition. A friend of
mine is using it to perform parallel processing on a cluster of PC's. I
haven't used it myself so I can't comment on its effectiveness but it must
be less efficient than using Linux in a native partition.

If you want to install Linux I'd recommend the Redhat 4.1 distribution. You
can purchase this on 6 CD's for around #20. I got my copy at a local
computer fair; if you can't get hold of it try lasermoon
(http://www.lasermoon.co.uk). Although you can download it I think it's
probably a lot easier to use CD's - at least initially. The Redhat
distribution is good as the install is now quite user friendly; not quite
like Windows 95 but it helps you set up X and networking. It also comes in
Redhat package manager format so you can install and de-install software
more easily. In my experience occassionally Linux distributions are broken
in some way which can be disconcerting for the first time user. Redhat 4.1
is pretty good in this respect as the only problem I've come across is with
xmkmf - a utility which converts Imakefiles to makefiles. When you install
Linux if you have trouble with this let me know.

Redhat should configure X Windows automatically for you but you will need
to know the card type and chipset of your graphics card, plus have an idea
of the specification of your monitor handy. 

As for downloading swarm, this is easy enough - you can do it from
netscape! The only thing is if you don't do it directly to your machine
you'll have to transfer it somehow - this could be hard as if my memory
serves me correctly it's bigger than one disk. One way to get around this
would to use PKZIP and WINZIP to create a spanning disk archive - that's
where several disks store the same program. Another way is to use a piece
of kit like a Zip drive (highly recommended - I wish I could get Iomega to
donate one to my department) to transfer the software. You can copy the
software to the dos partition on your machine, run Linux and then mount the
dos partition (mount -t msdos /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos). Alternatively Linux will
recognize the ZIP drive and do it that way.

> (please also tell me whether there are other things I need for 
> building up a multi-agent system in simulating travellers' 
> behaviour in a transportation system (I described such a simulation 
> system a few days ago)? 

I'd recommend you try to download all the swarm software in users/contrib.
I've spend the last couple of days playing with it to try to improve my
understanding of Swarm.  Whether it will help you with your simulation is
another matter.

Hope this all helps. Please email me if you need further help / advice.

Mark H. Butler
address@hidden
Liverpool Biocomputation Group
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~biocomp/


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