NOTE: This file was originally written several years ago, when many
people were complaining that Octave would not work for them on Linux
systems.  Generally, the problems were not actually bugs in Octave.
More recently, the compilers are better, most distributions are more
complete, and it seems harder to install incompatible sets of
libraries or header files (but some people still manage to do it).

Since July 1996, most work on Octave has been done using a Linux
system, and a number of people who regularly test Octave snapshot
releases also primarily use Linux systems.  Because of this, I believe
Octave should run reasonably well on most current Linux systems.
However, there have been some problems in the past, usually the result
of improper installation of compilers or libraries.  Sometimes the
problems have happened because of a botched upgrade or even a buggy
Linux distribution.

If you can, you should probably install Octave using one of the Debian
or RPM packages for Octave that are available with the major Linux
distributions.  For example, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
maintains the Debian Octave package and usually has them ready within
a day or so of new Octave releases.  They are available via the WWW at
http://www.debian.org/packages.html.

If for some reason you can't (or choose not to) install Octave from
one of the binary distributions or by using one of the Debian or RPM
packages and something goes wrong, please check the following list to
see if your problem is already well known before reporting a bug.

Octave compiles, but it won't run
---------------------------------

If you can compile Octave, but it crashes with a segmentation fault
right away, you probably have incompatible versions of libc and
libstdc++ installed, or you have a version of the dynamic loader,
ld.so, that is incompatible with your versions of the libraries, or
both.

Octave won't even compile
-------------------------

If you can't compile Octave, you should first check to see that your
compiler and header files are properly installed.  Do you have
multiple versions of the g++ include files on your system?  Are you
sure that your copy of g++ is finding the right set?  You can find out
by compiling a simple C++ program with -v:

bash$ cat foo.cc
#include <iostream.h>
int main (void) { cerr << "yo\n"; return 0; }

bash$ g++ -v foo.cc
gcc -v foo.cc -lstdc++ -lm
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/2.7.2/specs
gcc version 2.7.2
 /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/2.7.2/cpp -lang-c++ -v -undef ...
#include "..." search starts here:
#include <...> search starts here:
 /usr/lib/g++-include
 /usr/local/include
 /usr/i486-linux/include
 /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/2.7.2/include
 /usr/include
End of search list.
...

If the location of the correct set of include files is not listed in
the search path, then you might be able to fix that with a symbolic
link.  However, if your version of libstdc++ was not compiled with your
current version of gcc, you are likely to run into more trouble.

I/O in dynamically loaded .oct files doesn't work
-------------------------------------------------

If Octave prints things like `%.-1e' instead of numbers when you use a
dynamically linked .oct file, you probably need to create shared
versions of the Octave libraries.  To do that, configure Octave with
--enable-shared, recompile, and reinstall.


If you have comments or suggestions for this document, please contact
bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu.

John W. Eaton
jwe@bevo.che.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Chemical Engineering

Fri Feb 11 23:29:54 2000
