Ansys 5.7 on a recent linux workstation (openSUSE 12.3 x86_64 or CentOS6.5)

Some 15 years ago we have bought the professional version of ANSYS 5.7, from time to time somebody still uses it. Installation of such ancient sw is always challenging.


Prior the installation it is necessary to have uncompress installed; for openSUSE it is in gzip package, for CentOS use

yum install ncompress tcsh

The target environment is 64-bit openSUSE server. Installation script works in text mode (great!!) and works as expected. The license manager is running elsewhere, so  "Product only" installation has been performed. The license manager machine has to be included into the /ansys_inc/shared_files/licensing/ansyslmd.ini

SERVER=1057@flexlmserver.site

It seems, that the newer versions of ANSYS (v12.5, v14.0, v14.5) which are already installed in the tree /ansys_inc/ are untouched a working.

Let's try to start:

/ansys_inc/ansys57/bin/xansys57

Executing /ansys_inc/ansys57/bin/linuxia32/xans.e57
/ansys_inc/ansys57/bin/linuxia32/xans.e57: error while loading shared libraries: libXp.so.6: 
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

There is a few missing 32bit libraries, which have to be installed separately:

zypper in libXp6-32bit libXi6-32bit libGLU1-32bit 

yum -y install libXp.i686 lesstif.i686 libXi.i686 mesa-libGLU.i686

For openSUSE: The rare libXm.so.2 is included in the ANSYS installation:

rpm -ivh /ansys_inc/ansys57/syslib/OPENMOTIF/openmotif-2.1.30-2_ICS.i386.rpm
ln -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.so.2.1 /usr/lib/libXm.so.2

For CentOS: libXm.so.2 is included in lesstif

[root@hrabos ansys-5.7]# yum whatprovides  libXm.so.2
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit, replace
lesstif-0.95.2-1.el6.i686 : OSF/Motif library clone
Repo        : epel
Matched from:
Other       : libXm.so.2    .....

Now, /ansys_inc/ansys57/bin/xansys57 works well in a VNC environment.

Update, 2016-12-13
For CentOS 7:
lesstiff.rpm is available only in the 64 bit variant. Use corresponding package from the Fedora19 repository
rpm -ivh -force ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/archive.fedoraproject.org/fedora/linux/releases/19/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/l/lesstif-0.95.2-5.fc19.i686.rpm