[Radiance-general] oconv question

[Rob Guglielmetti]

On Apr 23, 2005, at 5:42 PM, J. David Maino wrote:
> I’m new to radiance, and relatively new to linux (I’ve been running  
> Debian sarge (2.6 kernel) for a few months now). I recently installed  
> the .deb packages for radiance, but I’m having some problems with the  
> oconv command. For some reason bash can’t find it. I followed the  
> instructions for installing the .deb files <a  
> href=http://www.dream.unipa.it/dream/pub/dot/anselmo/radiance/ 
> packages/>here<a>, and did not see any mention of oconv. Is this a  
> separate package I need to install? Is there another PATH that needs  
> to be set? Any help you could offer would be appreciated.

Hi David,

Welcome to the world of Radiance!  From the base of the learning curve,  
it can seem like a long way to the top.  I'm about 25% of the way up  
the slope and it was totally worth every grey hair.  =8-)

I'm not familiar with debian (tho my friend keeps telling me to ditch  
Fedora and use Debian instead), but I'd assume that the .deb thingy is  
like an .rpm distro?  Regardless, I'd bet that the problem is that the  
.deb installer is just not setting your PATH correctly, if at all.

Usually the Radiance binaries are installed to /usr/local/bin; probably  
the .deb installer placed all the binaries properly, but didn't set the  
PATH.  As a test you could try typing /usr/local/bin/oconv instead of  
oconv (along with the rest of the command you intended).  If that  
works, you can be sure that oconv is alive and well in the proper  
place, it's just that your "environment" doesn't know where to look for  
it.  You need to set your PATH (search path) to look in the  
/usr/local/bin directory.  There are actually a couple of search paths  
& variables that need to get set.  The way you do this is add a few  
instructions to your .bash_profile file.  Add these lines:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
RAYPATH=.:/usr/local/lib/ray
export PATH RAYPATH

... to your .bash_profile file (this is always located in your home  
directory), and you should be good to go.  Let us know if you have  
trouble editing this file.  I know what it's like to arrive at a bash  
prompt after years of using windows PCs or macs, and trying to do the  
most basic of tasks.

Hopefully this will get you up and running and on your way to Radiance  
enlightenment. Good luck, have fun, and report back on this frequency  
if you have more questions!

=================
    Rob Guglielmetti
www.rumblestrip.org