Installation

The Magma files and installers are available from the downloads page.

Magma requires a magmapassfile in order to run. This is a file specific to your computer. Your magmapassfile can be obtained by sending us your computer's MAC address.

If you are installing Magma on a Mac OS X computer for the first time then you will be prompted for your magmapassfile during the installation process. This is the most convenient way of installing your magmapassfile. However, if you haven't got one yet, you can always add your magmapassfile later.

Double click on the package icon to run the installer. It will guide you though the process.

The installation will ask for your password. If you don't have permission to install new applications on your computer, you will need to contact your local computer support. The entire process takes about one minute.

At some point during the installation you will be asked to locate your magmapassfile. If you don't have one yet, click on "Cancel" - the installer does not need to be rerun once you receive your passfile. Otherwise click on "Continue..." and locate your pass file.

Once the installation finishes, click on "Close". Magma will have been installed in your Applications directory.

See the INSTALL.txt file included with the downloaded files.

The following steps are for installing Magma running under the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). They were tested on a laptop running Windows 11 with an Intel processor.

Step 1: Set up WSL on your Windows machine. If you are aware that this is already installed then move on to step 2 (or 3). Otherwise: Use a command line window to enter "wsl -install". A restart will be needed. This will install WSL and Ubuntu Linux by default, there are options to choose a different version of Linux, e.g. "wsl -install -d Debian" The following instructions assume Ubuntu, but Linux systems are fairly similar to each other.

Step 2: Run ubuntu, i.e. issue the command "ubuntu" in a command line window. The command ubuntu should produce a linux/ubuntu shell. A possible glitch: in testing an error arose saying that some part of the WSL kernel needed updating, so go to the given web address, and find there a link to do the update and restart again.

Step 3: Download Magma from the Magma website's Linux downloads page. Download two .gz files: an executable suitable for your processor and the shared_complete.tar.gz file. This shared file has download link at the bottom of the download page, which may not be visible at first. Move the downloads from the Windows Download folder to ubuntu using Windows Explorer.

Step 4: Under ubuntu, follow the Linux installation instructions above to unpack everything and put it into a sensible location. Certain files then need editing to suit your system, check the instructions. The instructions assume that you rename the unpacked executable to "magma.exe".

Step 5: At this point try giving ubuntu the command "magma". If there is a valid magmapassfile in place then Magma should run correctly. If not then please see the FAQ for discovering your MAC address and installing your passfile under Linux.

Try running Magma by typing: magma in a terminal window.

If you get a message about needing a pass file, you need to install your magmapassfile. If you have any problems, please contact us with as much information as possible.

Mac OS X will unpack a .tar.gz, .tar, or .zip file automatically when you double-click on its icon. (Note that it may be necessary to unpack some files twice.)

If you would rather follow the UNIX-style instructions below you can use the Terminal command-line application, which can be found in your Utilities folder.

Unpacking .tar.gz files

First, ensure that you have a shell running and cd to the same directory as the downloaded file. To unpack a .tar.gz file, say foo.tar.gz, use the following command:

gunzip -c foo.tar.gz | tar xopf -

The newly extracted files will be created in the current directory. If you also wish to see a list of the files as they are extracted, instead use the command

gunzip -c foo.tar.gz | tar xopft -

Unpacking .tar files

First, ensure that you have a shell running and cd to the same directory as the downloaded file. To unpack a .tar file, say foo.tar, use the following command:

tar xopf foo.tar

The newly extracted files will be created in the current directory. If you also wish to see a list of the files as they are extracted, instead use the command

tar xopft foo.tar