Installing in Linux

The other day I attempted to install Wildfire 3.0 in Linux. SuSE 10.1 x86_64, to be precise.

I know it is not certified as only some RedHat 3.2 Workstation based on kernel 2.4 or whatever is the only rubberstamped distro yet, but this has little to do with the problem. On a side note I might mention that the installscript doesn't work at all in Ubuntu 6.06.

The first problem I encountered was that the installscript would terminate halfways with a complaint that it couldn't unpack some .tgz files.

I figured it might be my CD making read errors, so I tried copying all the files to the HDD first. No errors on that procedure.

Then I ran the installscript from the HDD and still got the same error messages, only this time about other .tgz packs.

So I looked inside those packs and compared to the unpacked directory structure and found to some surprise that the files were actually unpacked just proper.

So I ran the installscript a few times and sure enough - the termination and error messages appeared at different places every time.

Odd.

Anyway, In the end I had a fully installed WF3 except that the final setting of system variables and such were not executed. This could be partially fixed by entering /usr/local/prc/proeWildfire3.0/bin and running the setup utility from there.

Voil

FlexLM (or FlexNet for WF 3.0) is only designed to work with ethernet controllers, not any other kind -PCI, Firewire, etc. This is because it uses TCP/IP - specifically port7788 for network licencing.It also only works on the first ethernet controller that it finds and this cannot be altered using the FlexNet licence manager. Run <loadpoint>/proeWildfire3.0/bin/ptcsetup and when you get to the 'FlexNET License Servers' screen, expand the 7788@<servername> and drill down to Server Info, Name, HostID - this gives the MAC address of the licence that Pro/Engineer will attempt to use. If this is not your ethernet card's MAC address ask PTC to cut a new licence for the correct one.


All the best.


Rod

Thank you for posting!

Well, I figured that out so far - my problem is that FlexNet changes which ethernet controller it wishes to latch on to between reboots seemingly random.

Let me elaborate - I will call my PCI ethernet card "Realtek" as it is a Realtek 8139 whereas the motherboard-integrated circuit is called "VIA" as it is a VIA Rhine ethernet controller. The Realtek is only a "dongle" in the sense that my license is tied to it and I can move it to another computer if this one would break. I don't use the Realtek for networking, it just sits there in a PCI socket.

At first efter installation the Realtek was eth0 while the VIA was eth1. Wildfire worked.

The next day Linux had automagically rearranged so that the Realtek was eth1 and the VIA eth0 and Wildfire would not work. I found a way to assign the aliases so that eth0 would stick to the Realtek and eth1 to the VIA. Wildfire worked again.

The next day FlexNet complained and when I ran ptcsetup it was referring to the VIA all of a sudden, despite that it was indeed eth1 still.

Thus it seems as if FlexNet doesn't respect the OS' ordering of the network devices but has its own preference which I supposedly can't control?

Can this be true? I mean, I can't possibly be the first FlexNet user in the world to have more than one ethernet controller in my computer, can I?

We have installed Pro/E Wildfire 2.0 sucessfully on Fedora Core Linux and CentOS Linux. Both are RedHat-based, so it is not surprise that they works. We had similar difficulty with Ubuntu and abandoned. The WF 2.0 install and licensing is incomplete and not without issues, but we overcame them. I will show your posting to the our IS people and see if they have any information.

We have not received Wildfire 3.0 for Linux. How did you get it? Has it been released?

Did you figure this out yet? We have been running Wildfire 3.0 in Linux on several different types of computers. We don't use SUSE, but we use CentOS, RedHat, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. We haven't had any issues with FlexLM. We have a Flex running on a VServer on Linux. We have 10 seats and have license borrowing and timeouts enabled. It all seems to work.

Hi, and thanks for your interest.

No, I grudgingly gave up on Wildfire on Linux for now as I got message that Pro/Mechanica will not be released in version 3.0 for Linux. So I'll let my workstation continue to run Windows 2000 until I manage to bother again. I can run W2k until the sun snuffs it, I just don't want to. Memory handling is tight and bad and I do not approve of Microsoft and do not wish to support their ways by using their products.

Irritatingly enough, I have ran into similar NIC problems in Windows too. I built a new workstation a while ago, and now the PTC installation tool insists on that my CPUID is the integrated NIC MAC rather than my "dongle" NIC MAC. I had to solve this by disabling the integrated NIC and connect my ethernet to the dongle NIC.

I'm rather annoyed at the state of things, but I'm afraid I like Pro/E&M 3.0 more than I dislike Windows. So I suck it up like PTCs good serf. I do wish for a decent 64-bit Wildfire for Linux though.

Maybe I should take a look at Solaris?
Edited by: MichailS