IDL software is licensed and paid for by specific research groups within the School (specifically Astronomy, Cosmology and Biological Physics). If you are not a member of these groups, then please do not try installing this software.

<note> IDL is pre-installed on the departmentally-managed linux and windows systems, so these instructions should be unnecessary. More information specific to IDL on Physics linux cluster </note>

Go to your MyPhys page and choose software downloads.

IDL needs to communicate with our license server in order to run. The license serevr is directly accessible from the campus network, making the setup slightly more straightforward.

• Download the Windows IDL installer.
• Run the installer
• Next you need to define an environment variable to tell IDL the location of our license server.
  • Open the System control panel.
  • Click the Advanced tab, and click the Environment Variables button. Click the New button below the System Variables box and enter the following information:
    • In the Variable Name field, type LM_LICENSE_FILE in uppercase letters.
    • In the Variable Value field, enter 1700@idl.spa.umn.edu
  • If LM_LICENSE_FILE has already been defined for another software product, the definition of this license file can be appended using a semi-colon (;) as the delimiter. For example: C:\License\mylicense.dat;1700@idl.spa.umn.edu
  • Save the settings.

• Download the installer (either a tar.gz file for linux, or a pkg file for Mac).
• Run the installer
• Define the LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable, by modifying your .cshrc, .profile, or .bashrc file using any text editor. You must define the UNIX environment variable for LM_LICENSE_FILE to point to the server and port of the machine running the license manager.
  • For C shell: “setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE 1700@idl.spa.umn.edu”
  • For Korn or Bash shell: “export LM_LICENSE_FILE=1700@idl.spa.umn.edu”
• Log out and log back in to execute the .cshrc, .profile, or .bashrc file, or execute the file from the home directory using one of the following commands.
  • For C shell: source “.cshrc”
  • For Korn shell: “. .profile”
  • For Bash shell: “. .bashrc”

After installing newer versions of IDL, a “license wizard” runs. If you select the option for a network license, our downloads page has a minimal license.dat file, which you can download and provide for IDL. Note that this doesn't provide a local license; you still need to be able to connect to the license server to use the program.

To access the license server from outside, the easiest method is to set up a network “tunnel” using ssh.

• Download the free Windows ssh client Putty. Putty doesn't need installation, just put putty.exe in any directory, e.g. c:\program files\putty
• As above you need to define an environment variable to tell IDL the location of our license server, but this time we will be tunneling the connection through localhost:
  • Open the System control panel.
  • Click the Advanced tab, and click the Environment Variables button. Click the New button below the System Variables box and enter the following information:
    • In the Variable Name field, type LM_LICENSE_FILE in uppercase letters.
    • In the Variable Value field, enter 1700@localhost
  • If LM_LICENSE_FILE has already been defined for another software product, the definition of this license file can be appended using a semi-colon (;) as the delimiter. For example: C:\License\mylicense.dat;1700@localhost
  • Save the settings.
• Now we set up the ssh tunnel to communicate with the license server.
  • Click start, go to “run” and type

    "c:\program files\putty\putty.exe" -ssh ssh.physics.umn.edu -l <your_Physics_username> -N -L 1700:idl.spa.umn.edu:1700 -L 31700:idl.spa.umn.edu:31700

    and enter your password once asked. Nothing will happen afterwards (minimize the putty window).

  • Start IDL (note that the previous step has to be done every time before you start IDL).
  • You can create a batch file that merges the above steps. Create a file called startidl.bat in the directory where idlde.exe is located (usually C:\Program Files\RSI\IDL63\bin\bin.x86). Open the batch file with a text editor and type

    @echo off
    start "c:\program files\putty\putty.exe" -ssh ssh.physics.umn.edu -l <your_Physics_username> -N -L 1700:idl.spa.umn.edu:1700 -L 31700:idl.spa.umn.edu:31700
    PING 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 10000 >NUL
    idlde.exe

    The PING command is just to give you a brief delay (10000 milliseconds) to enter your password before IDL is started. Create a shortcut to startidl.bat file on your desktop or wherever you like it. Use it to start IDL.

• Follow the section about LM_LICENSE_FILE under the OS X installation instructions above, replacing the LM_LICENSE_FILE line with setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE 1700@localhost or export LM_LICENSE_FILE=1700@localhost, depending on your shell. Note: This step only needs to be done once.
• Launch the Terminal application and run the following command to create the ssh tunnel to the license server:

  ssh ssh.physics.umn.edu -l <your_Physics_username> -N -L 1700:idl.spa.umn.edu:1700

  Note: This step needs to be repeated each time you want to run IDL.

• Enter your password when prompted.
• Start IDL