Introductory course

PTB, Braunschweig, 22-26 June 2009

Computing requirements for the course

Requirements for:


PC hosting the course

32-bit architecture with operating system and software installation as outlined in the following.

Accounts specific to the course should be created on this PC for each one of the students; a privileged account should be created for the instructors (see below).
A directory named course, with read access to the students, should be created in the instructors' account; this directory will contain the exercise code, that each student should copy to her/his own course user account.

Operating System

Scientific Linux CERN 4 (SLC4)
ISO-images for the installation

CLHEP 2.0.3.2

It can be downloaded from CLHEP web page

There are unfortunately no precompiled libraries for CLHEP version 2.0.3.2 on the project's webpage.
Since the precompiled Geant4 libraries were built with this version, we would need it to be installed on the system (built from source).
The required package is: http://proj-clhep.web.cern.ch/proj-clhep/DISTRIBUTION/distributions/clhep-2.0.3.2-src.tgz

After extracting the package, one can find installation instructions in the file 2.0.3.2/CLHEP/INSTALL (it is basically the usual Linux build and installation procedure, with the three steps: "./configure","make", "make install").

The installation directory should be /usr/local (it is the default anyway).

Geant4 9.1.p01

Please note that this is not the latest version of Geant4; it is used for the course as it is well suited for training purposes.

From the Geant4 release archive please download:

As the next step extract all files and

CERNLIB

It is used for the histograms in the exercises; therefore please install it. You can find a rpm (for i386) at http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/slc4X/i386/yum/os/repodata/repoview/CERNLIB-0-2005-0.slc4.html

Please note: the Geant4 course instructors never tested this rpm, since we have an afs installation of the cernlib package. If you face any troubles, please just contact the instructors.

iAIDA 1.0.11 and Grace

iAIDA 1.0.11 and Grace (which is a plotting tool) are needed for data analysis in the exercises.

Detailed instructions how to install both packages are included in the iAida-primer. Grace is installed from the Fedora Core 4 repositories using yum, and iAIDA is built from source.
For the iAIDA build procedure, please run configure with the --with-grace and --with-cernlib options (using appropriate arguments according to the installation directories of cernlib and grace).
iAIDA should be installed in /usr/local (use --prefix=/usr/local when running configure).

Further details are available at the iAIDA webpage; the required package can be downloaded there. Version 1.0.16 will replace 1.0.11 shortly; it should be backward compatible for use in the Geant4 course too.


Students' PCs

To perform the exercises during the course, attendees are asked to login at a central Linux PC using ssh (Secure SHell). The following software tools are required on the students' PCs.

For PCs running Windows

Windows users need to install prior to the course

As SSH client one can use PuTTY and as X Window Server a convenient choice would be Xming.
Note: An Xming executable exists, which also installs PuTTY (see Xming-portable-PuTTY in the download section of the Xming webpage).

Course attendees are free to user other SSH clients and/or X Window servers, if they have sufficient knowledge of these tools and do not need support for using them.

For PCs running Linux

Linux usually includes a SSH client by default. However, course attendees should make sure that this is really the case (type ssh in a shell and hit enter. If the message "Command not found" appears, please use your package manager to install a ssh client).

Geant4 installation

Students are not required to install Geant4 on their computers before the course, even if it is highly recommended to do so and to get familiar with Geant4 documentation and training material.
Detailed installation information can be found on the Geant4 webpage; further support material can be found at

The instructions about how to configure the PC for the course also hold for the students' PCs. Please note that other Linux flavours than Scientific Linux CERN 4 are not supported by Geant4; no assistance will be provided during the course to students who may want to run the exercises on their own laptops.


Infrastructure for the instructors

We need:


Last update 29 maggio 2009 - Maria Grazia Pia