Fermi Science Support Center

Installing the Femi Science Tools

You can install the Fermi Science Tools using either a source distribution or using a precompiled binary. The preferred method is to use the binary distribution. If you are unsure which distribution to select contact your system administrator. On a unix command line you can find your machine type with the command

uname -m

and you should see something like i686, x86_64, or powerpc.

To determine the version of libc you can try

ls /lib/libc-*

and you should see something like

/lib/libc-2.5.so

where the 2.5 is the libc version.

Please read the release notes.

Current software version v9r23p1, released May 25, 2011.


We have binary distributions for:

Instructions for installing the tools from the binary tarfile are here


The package with the source distribution is here.

Instructions for installing the tools from the source tarfile are here


Errors and Bug Reports

Before submitting any bug reports please read the Known Bugs report for a listing of bugs that have been reported and are being worked on. If your problem is not covered then please submit a bug report via the FSSC helpdesk.

Note: You can now setup the FTOOLS using your usual startup scripts.

Useful Auxiliary files can be found here

This list gives the systems that the HEADAS distribution of the Fermi ScienceTools have been successfully built and tested on and gives the Release (Code Name), Kernel Version, GCC Version, and Architecture.

  • Scientific Linux SL release 5.2 (Boron), 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5, gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48), i686 i386
  • Scientific Linux SL release 5.2 (Boron), 2.6.18-194.11.1.el5, gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48), x86_64
  • Darwin 9.8.0 (Leopard), xnu-1228.15.4~1/RELEASE_PPC, powerpc-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465), PPC
  • Darwin 9.8.0 (Leopard), xnu-1228.15.4~1/RELEASE_I386, i686-apple-darwin9-gcc-4.0.1 (GCC) 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465), i386
  • Darwin 10.4.0 (Snow Leopard), xnu-1504.7.4~1/RELEASE_I386, i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5664), i386

This list gives the systems that the HEADAS distribution of the Fermi ScienceTools have been successfully tested on (but not built) and gives the Release (Code Name), Kernel Version, GCC Version, and Architecture.

  • Fedora release 13 (Goddard), 2.6.34.6-47.fc13.i686, gcc version 4.4.4 20100630 (Red Hat 4.4.4-10), i686 i386
  • Fedora release 13 (Goddard), 2.6.34.6-47.fc13.x86_64, gcc version 4.4.4 20100630 (Red Hat 4.4.4-10), x86_64
  • Fedora release 14, 2.6.35.13-91.fc14.i686, gcc version 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4), i686
  • Fedora release 14, 2.6.35.13-91.fc14.x86_64, gcc version 4.5.1 20100924 (Red Hat 4.5.1-4), x86_64
  • Ubuntu release 10.04 (Lucid), 2.6.32-24-generic, gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5), i686
  • Ubuntu release 10.04 (Lucid), 2.6.32-24-generic, gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5), x86_64
  • Ubuntu release 10.10, 2.6.35-28-generic, gcc version 4.4.5 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5), i686
  • Ubuntu release 10.10, 2.6.35-28-generic, gcc version 4.4.5 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.4.4-14ubuntu5), x86_64

The SAE will not run on the following systems. We suggest installing and running a Virtual Machine of one of the above distributions.

  • Mac OSX Tiger
  • Any Max OSX PPC distribution
  • Any Windows distribution