[chimera-dev] Re: Chimera at NCMI

[Thomas Goddard]

Hi Steve,

  I don't understand why the installer failed when installing in
/home/stevel/chimera.  I just tried the linux installer from the web
in my home directory and it worked.  If it works as root for you, that seems
to indicate it is a permissions problem.  Can you send me the permissions
on your home directory, "ls -l /home/stevel"?  It should also work if
you create the chimera directory first.  I tested that and it also
worked.  The installer no longer removes an old Chimera.  If you try
to install where a Chimera already exists, it will ask you to move it
or delete it yourself (from another shell) before proceeding.

  I agree that the web page should say next to the download link
the date and version of the last release.  Currently you have to
follow the release notes link from the home page to check this.
If you already have Chimera running, the Help/Software Updates
menu entry will tell you if you have the most recent version.

  If chimera is installed as root, users can still add their own
directory of extensions using Extensions/Manager/Directories tab.

  Chimera will definitely remain free for academic users.

  The Puppet extension for remote controlling chimera uses the Tcl socket
command to listen for socket connections.  When a new connection is made
a Tcl event appears in the event loop.  I couldn't get that behaviour with
the Python socket module, and I didn't try a separate thread.  Using Tcl
socket worked ok, but I don't know if it handles unix domain sockets.
I was using INET domain sockets and Puppet just checks that the connection
is being made from the machine chimera is running on.  That is obviously
inadequate security on a multi-user machine.  The Puppet extension is not
distributed with Chimera because of this security problem.  I think I gave
you a copy several months ago.  If you can't find it, I can provide you
another copy of the Puppet Python code.

	Tom