[SciPy-user] troubles installing Scipy on SUSE 10.1

[Christian Kristukat]

Nicolas Chopin <nicolas.chopin <at> bristol.ac.uk> writes:

> 
>    Dear all,
> 
> I have troubles installing Scipy on my SUSE 10.1 box (a standard i686
> DELL laptop).
> I spent a few hours trying to find a solution on the internet, to no avail.
> 
> I assumed at first that BLAS and LAPACK were properly installed, but it
> seems the corresponding SUSE packages are incomplete.
> (Maybe you can confirm this?).

Yes, that's true.

> Then I tried to install everything from source, following the detailed
> tutorial of Steve Baum:
> http://pong.tamu.edu/tiki/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=6&postId=97
> but I get complicate error messages which I don't understand.
> 
> For instance, when I try to import scipy:
> 
> >>> from numpy import *
> >>> from scipy import *
> import linsolve.umfpack -> failed: liblapack.so.3: cannot open shared
> object file: No such file or directory
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File
> "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/scipy/linalg/__init__.py", line
> 8, in ?
>     from basic import *
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/scipy/linalg/basic.py",
> line 17, in ?
>     from flinalg import get_flinalg_funcs
>   File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/scipy/linalg/flinalg.py",
> line 15, in ?
>     from numpy.distutils.misc_util import PostponedException
> ImportError: cannot import name PostponedException

For me that looks like some incompatibility between the versions of scipy
and numpy you're trying to install. But that's only a guess.
 
> So I understand that liblapack.so.3 is missing, but how do I get it? In
> the tutorial, there is only a reference to liblapack.a

Make sure, that scipy really grabs your home made libs.
 
> I had also a few error messages during the compilation of scipy,
> indicating python could not find various libraries, including BLAS and
> LAPACK. I did install BLAS and LAPACK however, since I followed the
> tutorial.

That's normal, but at some point it should say that he will use lapack/blas
libs at
/usr/local/lib/libfblas.a
/usr/local/lib/libflapack.a
if you exactly followed the instructions on that wiki.

> I am not a developer, just a scientist who would like to get rid of
> Matlab; so I am quite confused by all these error messages, and I don't
> have a clue of what to do to fix the problem.
> On various forums, people mention some problems with too recent versions
> of gcc or g77. Could that be one explanation?

The gfortran on SuSE10.0 was indeed still buggy, but on SuSE10.1 (gorftran 4.1)
up to now I did not encounter any problems when using gfortran instead of g77.

If you like I can send you numpy/scipy P4 rpms built from last weeks svn on
SuSE10.1.

Regards, Christian