Installing the Binary Release

UNIX

Introduction

The system is delivered as a single compressed tar file.

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Installation Procedure

When installed, the entire system, except for a small start-up script, resides in a single directory tree. The location of this directory tree can be chosen arbitrarily by the installer, and it does not need to be in the user's $PATH. The only requirements are that the file system where it is placed has enough free space, and that the users who run Erlang/OTP have read access to it. In the example below, the directory tree is assumed to be located at /usr/local/erlang, which is here called the top-level directory.

It is assumed that you have the compressed tar file, the name of which is .tar.gz]]>, where ]]> is a string denoting the particular Erlang/OTP release, e.g. otp_LXA_11930_sunos5_R9B.

Wherever the string ]]> is used below, it should be replaced by the actual name prefix of the compressed tar file.

The tape archive file does not have one single directory in which all other files are rooted. Therefore the tape archive file must be extracted into an empty (newly created) directory.

If the top-level directory does not already exist, create it:

mkdir /usr/local/erlang

Change the current directory to the top level directory:

cd /usr/local/erlang

Create the installation directory with an appropriate name. For example:

mkdir otp_r7b

Change to the installation directory, e.g.

cd otp_r7b

Assuming the compressed tar file resides in the directory ]]>,. extract the compressed tar file into the current directory:

gunzip -c <SOME-DIR>/<PREFIX>.tar.gz | tar xfp -

Read the README file in the installation directory for last minute updates, before proceeding.

Run the Install script in the installation directory, with the absolute path of the installation directory as argument,

./Install /usr/local/erlang/otp_r7b

and supply answers to the prompts.

In most cases, there is a default answer in square brackets ([]). If the default is satisfactory, just press ]]>. In general you are only prompted for one thing:

"Do you want to use a minimal system startup instead of the SASL startup?"

In a minimal system, only the Kernel and STDLIB applications are loaded and started. If the SASL startup is used, the SASL application is included as well. Normally, the minimal system is enough.

Make Erlang/OTP available for users, either by putting the path /usr/local/erlang/otp_r7b/bin in users $PATH variable, or link the executable /usr/local/erlang/otp_r7b/bin/erl accordingly, e.g.:

ln -s /usr/local/erlang/otp_r7b/bin/erl /usr/local/bin/erl