The Linux installer for Insight is supplied in two versions. - The _workstation_ installer, which is best if you have a standalone machine that you have root access to. - The _thin client_ installer, which is best if you have limited privileges on the machine, or if you need to install on one machine and run on another.
Read the following sections before you install Insight and decide which one is more appropriate for your needs.
The workstation Installer
The workstation installer is a self-extracting shell script which installs Insight as a set of RPM packages.
Like any RPM installer, you need to have root access in order to run the _rpm -i_ command, which the self-extracting shell script does on your behalf. Like any RPM installer, you are informed of any missing package dependencies at installation time.
The workstation installer installs to a fixed path in /opt/Autodesk. It also writes a configuration file to /etc/sysconfig and (unless you asked it not to) creates scripts in /etc/init.d to start the Moldflow Job Manager daemon. It creates a non-root user which will run the Moldflow Job Manager daemon. In a lot of respects, a workstation installation is like the Windows version of Insight: it requires administrator privileges to install and it includes the Job Manager as a service.
A typical user of the Workstation installer is someone who has a spare Linux machine under the desk, and wants to submit jobs to it from their Windows machine running Synergy.
The workstation installer can be uninstalled by running _rpm -e_ commands. A convenience shell script is installed to make this a one-line operation.
The thin client installer
The thin client installer is a self-extracting shell script that expands Insight from a TAR archive into a nominated directory.
The thin client requires no special privileges to install, and no special privileges to run. It can be installed in any directory. It can be run locally, or it can be installed on a server, the files distributed over NFS, and run on another machine that mounts the same directory read-only.
The thin client installer contains the Moldflow Job Manager executable but does not attempt to run it. It makes no changes to /etc/init.d. If you need to run the Moldflow Job Manager then you need to start and stop it explicitly.
In a lot of respects, a thin client installation is like a "Portable Apps" version of Insight: it has slightly reduced functionality but it can be installed by anyone and removed without leaving a trace.
A typical user of the thin client is a user on a cluster or on a standalone machine which restricts root access.
Because a thin client installation is just a directory, it can be uninstalled simply by removing the directory.