Installing on Linux

Applies to every Linux delivery: the .deb package and the .AppImage image with the graphical programs, and the .tar.gz archive and its .AppImage counterpart with the computation kernels for console use.

1. System requirements

The kernels from the .tar.gz archive need no desktop at all: they run on a machine that has nothing but a terminal.

The .AppImage image needs the same glibc 2.39: the programs inside are built on Ubuntu 24.04 and will not start on older systems — Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, RHEL and Rocky 9. The .deb package is for Ubuntu and Debian, the image is for every other distribution: Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Manjaro.

2. Package with the graphical interface (.deb)

The package contains all six programs, desktop menu icons, sample tasks and the user manual.

2.1. Installation

Go to the directory with the downloaded file and run:

sudo apt install ./tmc-suite_1.0.0_amd64.deb

Dependencies are resolved automatically. When installing from a file, apt requires a path: the leading ./ is mandatory.

2.2. Running the programs

After installation the programs appear in the desktop menu. From a terminal they are started by name:

tmcros      tmcgrout      tmc_dn      fieldview      planarrt_h      planarrt_x

A file can be opened right away by passing its path:

planarrt_h /home/user/work/task.tpl

2.3. Where things are

The manual also opens from the program itself: Help → About, the “User manual” link.

2.4. Removal

sudo apt remove tmc-suite

3. A single-file delivery (.AppImage)

TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage holds the same six programs in one file. The Qt libraries, the fonts, the sample tasks and the user manual are inside it, so nothing has to be installed and no dependencies have to be resolved. This is the way to go on systems where the .deb package cannot be installed.

3.1. Preparation

Allow the downloaded file to run:

chmod +x TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

3.2. Running the programs

The first argument says which of the six programs to start:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage fieldview /home/user/work/field.ex

With no argument the PlanarRT_H solver shell opens. --help prints the list of programs:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage --help

If you use one program all the time, make a link named after it — then no argument is needed:

ln -s TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage tmcros
./tmcros /home/user/work/signal.t

Headless calculation works exactly as it does for the package:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage planarrt_h -Arb /home/user/work/task.tpl

3.3. What is inside the image

To get the contents out without running the program:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract

A squashfs-root directory with the same files appears next to it.

3.4. Removal

Delete the image file — nothing else is created in the system. The program settings stay in ~/.config/TMC_Suite/.

4. Computation kernels package (.tar.gz)

The archive contains two kernels — tmc_rth (H-mode) and tmc_rtx (X-mode) — the user manual and the licence text. Nothing needs to be installed: unpacking is enough.

4.1. Unpacking

tar xzf tmc-suite-cli-linux-x86-64.tar.gz
cd tmc-suite-cli

4.2. Running a calculation

./tmc_rth /home/user/work/task.tpl

The kernel takes the output file name from the task itself, from the #OUTPUT section. No second argument is needed.

To check that the kernel starts and which version it is:

./tmc_rth --version

Headless operation, exit codes and batch processing are covered in the “Headless mode” chapter of the manual.

4.3. The same thing in one file

The kernels are also published as TMC_Suite_CLI-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage, with nothing to unpack:

chmod +x TMC_Suite_CLI-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
./TMC_Suite_CLI-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage tmc_rth /home/user/work/task.tpl

The user manual is inside the image, under usr/share/tmc-suite/.

5. Checking the installation

Calculate one of the bundled samples:

planarrt_h -Arb /usr/share/tmc-suite/samples/planarrt_h/horn.tpl

The calculation takes a few seconds. Next to the task the files horn.t, horn.tt, horn.s, horn.ex, horn.AMP, horn.FAZ and horn.DAT appear.

If you use the image, the samples are inside it — get them out with --appimage-extract and calculate from there:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage planarrt_h -Arb /full/path/horn.tpl

Open the resulting signal:

tmcros /usr/share/tmc-suite/samples/planarrt_h/horn.t

A plot should be drawn. If it is there, the installation is complete.

6. Worth knowing

Always give the full path to the task. The program derives the task directory from it, and that is where it looks for included files (#include) and .eps distributions. Started with a bare file name, it looks in the wrong place.

Keep tasks on a Linux disk. The kernel opens the output file on every time step. If the task sits on a Windows partition mounted under /mnt, every such operation crosses the boundary between two systems and the calculation slows down several times over.

Speed depends on the task. With field and topology output switched off the calculation is fast; with them on it takes noticeably longer. The same is true of the Windows version.

Both packages calculate identically. Output files produced by the graphical programs and by the console kernels are the same, and they open in the Windows version of the package and in the macOS version.

Fonts. The package pulls in fonts-liberation: font names come from task files created on Windows, and without these fonts the plot labels do not line up.

7. If something goes wrong

Unable to locate package during installation. The ./ before the file name is missing: without it apt searches the repositories instead of the disk.

The program does not start, the terminal shows error while loading shared libraries. Dependencies were not installed. Run:

sudo apt --fix-broken install

FieldView opens but draws no field. OpenGL is missing. Install it:

sudo apt install libgl1-mesa-dri libglu1-mesa

Over SSH without graphics output, start it like this:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 fieldview /path/field.ex

The program reports that it cannot open a distribution file. The task was started with a bare file name: give the full path to the .tpl file.

The image does not start, the terminal mentions libfuse.so.2. The distribution lacks the package that runs AppImages. Install libfuse2 (on Ubuntu 24.04 it is called libfuse2t64), or run the image like this:

./TMC_Suite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage --appimage-extract-and-run

The image does not start, the terminal says version 'GLIBC_2.39' not found. The system is older than the one the image was built on. The only way out is to build from source on your own system — the sources and the instructions are in the project repository.