The latest public release of SOLAR may be downloaded from the official SOLAR website at:
This is also the definitive source as to the latest official released versions of SOLAR available for different systems.
In order to download SOLAR, you will need to provide your name, email address, and institutional affiliation. Also, if your research is supported by a grant from the NIH, we would like to know your grant number. Information provided is not shared with any other organization other than the NIH. Providing this information on our website gives you only "download authorization" (and not "user registration") for SOLAR.
There is a separate and additional user registration process which must be performed through email (described below in Section 2.3). There is no charge for using SOLAR and we provide it freely to all who follow our registration procedures. The SOLAR project is supported by the NIH.
SOLAR may also be sent as an email attachment to those sending a request to solar@sfbrgenetics.org. CD's may be provided in special cases, but we generally don't like to make them.
The SOLAR web page tells you how to unpack the SOLAR archive. The exact command required depends on the name of the archive, which depends on the name of the system you will be running it on. For example, on a Solaris SPARC system, you would use the command:
gunzip solar_sparc.tar.gz tar -xf solar_sparc.tar
(If you don't already have the gunzip command, you must install that first. It is free software available in many places including http://www.gnu.org.)
After unpacking the archive, you should read the
README files and run the
install_solar script. If you run the
script with no arguments, it will describe the required and
optional arguments. It is safest to invoke the script with
a dot-slash (./) prefix to be sure you are
executing the one in the current working directory:
./install_solar
After SOLAR has been installed, each user must register
to use all the features of SOLAR. (Many SOLAR operations may
be performed prior to registration, so you can still get
started while waiting for your registration key. You may
create IBD and MIBD files, for example, and that will take
some time. But you will not be able to maximize models or get
LOD scores. But in order to do any operations prior to
registering SOLAR, including using the
register command itself, you will need to
scroll past the registration instructions using the
space key.)
Do not confuse "registration" with the "download authorization" provided to download SOLAR from our website. In order to register each SOLAR user, you must send an email. User registration is not and cannot be done on our website.
When each unregistered user starts SOLAR, a message giving registration instructions is displayed. Please read this carefully:
You do not appear to be registered as a SOLAR user. To
register, please send an email message to solar@sfbrgenetics.org
asking for solar key(s) and providing the following information
for each person who will be using SOLAR (a key is provided for
each SOLAR user; you may register additional users at any
time):
1. login name(s) on the machine(s) on which SOLAR will be run
(this is the name you use to log in)
2. email address(es)
3. if used in research funded by the NIH, please specify
grant number(s)
We try to send out keys within 24 hours except on weekends and
U.S. holidays. No key request has yet been turned down.
Sometimes keys do not get delivered due to email problems
(email is NOT 100% reliable). If you have not gotten your key
in a few days, please ask for it again.
This information will be used to notify users of updates and to
maintain the NIH funding of the SOLAR project. It will not be
sold or shared with organizations other than SFBR and the NIH.
Meanwhile, you can use ALL SOLAR commands EXCEPT those which
maximize models (e.g. the commands maximize, twopoint,
multipoint, and bayesavg). If you need to compute IBD or MIBD
matrices for linkage analysis, you can get started doing that.
You can familiarize yourself with the program using the
built-in help, the documents in the solar/doc directory, and
the example provided in the solar/doc/Example directory.
When you receive your registration key by e-mail, you then use
the SOLAR register command. For example,
if your key is aaaabbbb, you will give the command:
solar> register aaaabbbb
This creates a file named .solar_reg in
your home directory. To run on other systems, you may copy
the .solar_reg file to the home
directories on those systems, or execute the
register command in SOLAR there.
(The file .solar_reg simply contains your
key as an ASCII string.)
Before you have registered, you will see the above warning
message. If your terminal window is fairly short, you might
need to press the space key a few times to get to the
bottom of the warning message. Then, in some cases, you might
need to press the return key. But after that, you
should see a normal solar> prompt to which
you can enter the register command or any
other commands that do not perform the maximization of models.
Outside SOLAR, you could create a key file
with the following Unix (or linux) command:
echo "aaaabbbb" >~/.solar_reg
The same SOLAR key will work on all systems, but only for the same login name (also known as username, i.e. the 2-8 character word you type to the login prompt).
Registration is intended simply to build a list of SOLAR users. There is no charge for obtaining or using SOLAR at this time, and there is no limit to the number of users who may register, but each SOLAR user must register.