I apologize for the fact that I
still need your help. I am not sure where I went wrong, however, below is the message
received in a terminal window.
My daughter is actually the one who is
required to use Octave for a college assignment and the Mac Book Pro is hers.
Unfortunately, I do very well with my Windows PC but I find it difficult to maneuver
the same on an Apple. I hope there is a quick fix to this so that she can get
to work on her assignment.
Last login: Sun Jan 15 16:33:59 on
ttys002 Mackenzie-Fitzgeralds-MacBook-Pro:~ mackenziefitzgerald$ exec
'/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave'
GNU Octave, version 3.4.0
Copyright (C) 2011 John W.
Eaton and others.
This is free software; see
the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO
WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. For details, type `warranty'.
Octave was configured for
"x86_64-apple-darwin10.7.3".
Additional information about
Octave is available at http://www.octave.org.
Please contribute if you
find this software useful.
For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/help-wanted.html
Read http://www.octave.org/bugs.html to
learn how to submit bug reports.
For information about
changes from previous versions, type `news'.
octave-3.4.0:1>
sombrero(24)
error: popen2: popen2
(child): unable to start process -- No such file or directory
error: called from:
error:
/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/share/octave/3.4.0/m/plot/__gnuplot_open_stream__.m
at line 30, column 44
error:
/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/share/octave/3.4.0/m/plot/__gnuplot_drawnow__.m
at line 72, column 19
sh: gnuplot: command not
found
error: `unset' undefined
near line 2 column 1
warning: broken pipe -- some
output may be lost
On Jan
13, 2012, at 8:43 AM,
Fitzgerald Barry wrote:
Thank you so much for your response.
Quick question. Prior to downloading and installing octave-3.4.0-i386.dmg that you
have suggested, should I completely eliminate the previous version 2011-04-21
binary of Octave 3.4.0 from her Mac? (that was previously installed and did not
function properly)
It
actually looks to be the same binary. But yes, I would reinstall it making
sure to install gnuplot first. So put the octave.app in the trash,
re-mount the disc image and follow the steps outlined below. Note that if
you want to start octave from the command line (open
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) you will have to add the path to the
octave binary as outlined below.
From: Stuart Edwards
[mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2012
8:31
AM
To: Fitzgerald Barry
Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Octave Problem with
Mac OS X
Importance: High
On Jan 12, 2012,
at 11:42 PM, Fitzgerald Barry wrote:
My daughter installed Octave on her Mac Book Pro and it does
not seem to work. Each time she enters anything, it returns "syntax
error". I then installed Octave on my Windows PC and she was able to enter
same data and was able to plot it with no problem. Are there known issues associated
with Mac OS X? Downloaded versions and URL from which they were downloaded are
shown below.
This seems to be a common problem and has been discussed here on
several occasions in the past few months. I was preparing the following
for the 'wiki' but hadn't quite finished it. It should help you anyway.
The following is current as of
20120105. The installation process has been confirmed on an iMac running
OS X 10.6.8 that has never previously had octave or gnuplot installed.
Download this binary
(octave-3.4.0-i386.dmg) at:
It's the latest version of octave
for which an OS X binary is available.
Mount (double click) the dmg.
Look in the 'Extras' folder and find
a gnuplot-4.4.3-aqua-i386.dmg disc image.
This is a nice OS X binary of an up to
date version of gnuplot and, ironically, may be the only place such a gnuplot
binary exists for OS
X. As an
added bonus this gnuplot package includes and relies on Aquaterm a windowing
system that many Mac users feel produces more elegant plots than X11.
Open (double click) this dmg.
Move the 'Gnuplot' icon to your
Applications folder. For purpose of this discussion - this is assumed to be
/Applications. If you are using a local Applications folder
(/~/Applications) appropriate modification of the paths specified below will be
necessary.
At this point, Aquaterm is now also
installed. It is located at
/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/lib/Aquaterm.app If you
need it for some other application, this is the path that will find it.
But don't move it to the upper level of the Applications folder - gnuplot
will be looking for it where it self-installs. (To inspect the contents
of an .app right click or control-click on it and select 'show package
contents')
Move the 'Octave' icon from the
first .dmg to the same folder (/Applications). It is strongly suggested
that gnuplot be installed before octave.
Now you have everything you need to
run octave/gnuplot/aquaterm. You can put the octave and gnuplot icons in
the dock and either will open in a terminal window with a simple 'click'.
To test octave, click its icon, and the octave prompt should appear in a
new terminal window along with some splash screen information. Then type
'sombrero(24)' at the octave prompt and after a while aquaterm will open and
the multicolor sombrero plot should appear.
Starting octave from the command
line requires one further step to inform bash (your shell) where the octave
binary is located. This is accomplished through the bash initialization
file /.bashrc (. means it's normally invisible in the finder). The
simplest way is to add the PATH to the octave binary to your $PATH.
Open a new terminal window.
Type (without the # comments):
touch /.bashrc # this
creates a .bashrc file if one does not exist
open /.bashrc # this opens .bashrc as a text document
(probably in TextEdit unless you have it set up for some other editor)
export
PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Octave/Contents/Resources/bin # this
appends the octave binary path to your existing path
Either open a new terminal window,
or type 'source /.bashrc' in the existing one (to re-initialize it) and then
simply type 'octave' at the command line. Octave should start as
described above and you can repeat the 'sombrero' test to make sure everything
is working properly.