trying to install gnuplot

ttavoy

Hi. I would like to install gnuplot. Following the suggestion given in another thread here - https://community.opalstack.com/d/150-miniconda-package-manager - I installed miniconda. Then I did:

$ conda install -c bioconda gnuplot

which seemed to work OK. But then running

$ gnuplot

it says

gnuplot: error while loading shared libraries: libjpeg.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Then - just to see what it would say - I tried

$ find . -name "libjpeg.so.*"

and it says:

./miniconda3/pkgs/jpeg-9b-h024ee3a_2/lib/libjpeg.so.9
./miniconda3/pkgs/jpeg-9b-h024ee3a_2/lib/libjpeg.so.9.2.0
./miniconda3/lib/libjpeg.so.9
./miniconda3/lib/libjpeg.so.9.2.0

Does this give enough information for anyone to help? Thanks.

sean

ttavoy hmm, miniconda is supposed to build-in the dependencies so this looks like a packaging error to me.

You might be able to solve it by creating a libjpeg.so.8 symlink pointing to libjpeg.so.9.2.0, eg:

ln -s $HOME/miniconda3/lib/libjpeg.so.9.2.0 $HOME/miniconda3/lib/libjpeg.so.8

ttavoy

Remarkably, that makes it work!

(Apparently. If linux programmers cope with this kind of uncertainty on a daily basis, hats off to them.)

Thank you.

Next I would like to try to install the pngcairo terminal for gnuplot. If anyone knows how to do this I would be grateful for assistance (though I would accept that it might not be within the remit of opalstack support to provide help at this level of detail).

In case I can't get that working, here is a more general question:

Some years ago I managed to install gnuplot from source at webfaction using the very comprehensive guide at

https://docs.webfaction.com/software/home-install.html

Would it be recommended (or not) to try the same thing at opalstack?

sean

ttavoy if the gnuplot provided by miniconda doesn't include the features you need and doesn't provide a way to enable them, then yes you'll need to build gnuplot from source (along with whatever dependencies you need). The general build documentation that WF can be used here as well.

Note that due to the age of CentOS 7 you might have trouble building the latest versions of the items you need, so you might need to experiment with different versions until you find the combination that works.

@ttavoy do you have a minimum version requirement for gnuplot?

ttavoy

Now ok I think! Thanks. The main thing I did wrong before was

$ conda install -c bioconda gnuplot

which installed a rather old version of gnuplot. I have now removed that and tried again with

$ conda install -c conda-forge gnuplot

... seems much better and contains the pngcairo terminal (which does anti-aliasing).