Getting & Starting DAWN

Owned by wnm24546
Last updated: Jul 09, 2014
2 min read

DAWN, Data Analysis WorkbeNch is a platform for the analysis of a wide range of scientific data, applicable to any domain of research requiring visualisation of data. DAWN is based on the Eclipse development environment and as a result has a highly configurable, plugin based interface. We'll start by getting the program started and then move on to talk about how the program works. If you come across a name or term you're not sure about, have a look in the glossary. Throughout these tutorials, parts of the text will be coloured blue (like this). These are tasks which you, the user, need to do to work through the tutorial.

How to get DAWN

a. Using a Linux Workstation at Diamond

DAWN is available for use on all Linux workstations within Diamond. Open a terminal and type:

[abc00000@ws000 ~]$ module load dawn

After the module has loaded, you can start DAWN using:

[abc00000@ws000 ~]$ dawn &

Once DAWN has loaded you can take your first steps using the software...

b. Everywhere else

ZIP files containing the DAWN package can be downloaded from: http://www.dawnsci.org

DAWN is supported in 32 and 64 bit versions of the following operating systems:

  • Windows 7
  • Linux (RHEL 6; should work on other distributions, but not tested)

A Mac OSX download is available, but is currently not supported.

i) Windows

Download the ZIP file with the filename ending in windows32 or windows64 from the website - you can check whether you have a 32 or 64-bit version of Windows by right clicking on Computer and clicking on Properties. Once the download completes, find the file and right click on the file and extract it to a new folder, for example, in your home folder (C:\Users\MyUserName\DAWN). Find this folder using Windows Explorer and double click on the file dawn.exe Once DAWN has loaded you can take your first steps using the software...

For Administrators/advanced users: you can alternatively extract DAWN to C:\DAWN, where it is then accessible to all users. To make it faster to access you might like to put a Shortcut on the Desktop or in the Start Menu.

ii) Linux

Download the ZIP file with the filename ending in linux32 or linux64 from the website - you can check whether you have a 32 or 64-bit version of Linux by opening a Terminal window (e.g. xterm, gnome-terminal etc.) and typing:

[user@myhostname ~]$ uname -m
i686       <== 32-bit
x86_64     <== 64-bit

Once the download completes, extract the files to a directory. As a user, run the following commands in a Terminal:

[user@myhostname ~]$ mkdir ~/dawn
[user@myhostname ~]$ cd ~/dawn
[user@myhostname ~]$ cp ~/Downloads/DawnDiamond-{version}-linux{32|64}.zip .
[user@myhostname dawn]$ unzip DawnDiamond-{version}-linux{32|64}.zip
[user@myhostname dawn]$ dawn &

To run DAWN in the future you will have to start a terminal window and type:

[user@myhostname ]$ cd ~/dawn
[user@myhostname ]$ dawn &

(You can use the ~/bin directory and a symbolic link to make accessing DAWN even easier - for more info check out this link).

Once DAWN has loaded you can take your first steps using the software...

 

For Administrators/advanced users: if you have administrator rights, you can unpack dawn to /usr/local/dawn and make DAWN available to all users directly from the terminal:

[user@myhostname ~]$ mkdir /usr/local/dawn
[user@myhostname ~]$ cd /usr/local/dawn
[user@myhostname ~]$ cp ~/Downloads/DawnDiamond-{version}-linux{32|64}.zip .
[user@myhostname dawn]$ unzip DawnDiamond-{version}-linux{32|64}.zip
[user@myhostname dawn]$ ln -s /usr/local/dawn/dawn /usr/local/bin/dawn